HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

FIRST  RECTOR  OF 

SAINT    PAUL'S   SCHOOL 

CONCORD,  NEW  HAMPSHIRE 


BY 

JAMES  CARTER  KNOX 

MASTER  AND  FORMER  SCHOLAR  AT  SAINT  PAUI/S 


LONGMANS,    GREEN,    AND    CO. 

FOURTH  AVENUE  &  30TH  STREET,  NEW  YORK 

LONDON,  BOMBAY,  CALCUTTA,  AND  MADRAS 

1915 


L-D  ?5C  I 


COPYRIGHT, 
BY  JAMES  CARTER  KNOX 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Henry  Augustus  Coit Frontispiece 

From  a  Photograph. 

Henry  Augustus  Coit    ....     facing  page  92 
From  a  daguerreotype  about  1854* 

Facsimile  of  Inscription,  written 

by  Dr.  Coit "        " 


M113335 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 


HENEY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 


"  One  lesson,  Nature,  let  me  learn  of  thee, 
One  lesson  which  in  every  wind  is  blown. 
One  lesson  of  two  duties  kept  at  one 
Though  the  loud  world  proclaim  their  enmity  — 

Of  toil  unsever'd  from  tranquillity; 
Of  labour,  that  in  lasting  fruit  outgrows 
Far  noisier  schemes,  accomplish'd  in  repose, 
Too  great  for  haste,  too  high  for  rivalry. 

Yes,  while  on  earth  a  thousand  discords  ring, 
Man's  senseless  uproar  mingling  with  his  toil, 
Still  do  thy  quiet  ministers  move  on, 

Their  glorious  tasks  hi  silence  perfecting; 
Still  working,  blaming  still  our  vain  turmoil; 
Laborers  that  shall  not  fail,  when  man  is  gone." 

—  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

/^ARLYLE  begins  his  Life  of  Sterling  by 
\^S  remarking  that  "a  true  delineation  of 
the  smallest  man  and  his  scene  of  pilgrimage 
through  life  is  capable  of  interesting  the  great- 
est man."  This  generalization  simply  puts  in 
epigrammatic  form  the  well-known  fact  that 

[3] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

a,  true  transcript  of  any  man's  life  and  char- 
acter, if  sufficiently  searching  and  intimate,  will 
be  likely  to  interest  all  men.  But  it  must  be  a 
"  true  delineation,"  and  any  attempt  at  a  sketch 
of  a  man's  life,  where  either  defect  in  truth 
or  excess  in  laudation  becomes  the  dominant 
note,  would  be  a  failure,  just  as  the  lack  of 
verisimilitude  spoils  a  novel.  The  writer  will 
endeavor  to  avoid  overstatement  of  every  kind, 
but  may  fairly  begin  by  saying  that  Henry 
Augustus  Coit  was  generally  conceded  to  be  a 
great  man  both  in  character  and  achievement. 
The  press  notices  and  resolutions  that  appeared 
at  the  time  of  his  death  leave  no  doubt  as  to 
his  place  in  public  estimation.  The  real  "  scene 
of  his  pilgrimage  "  was  St.  Paul's  School,  Con- 
cord, N.  H.,  and  his  life  the  forty  years  of  ardu- 
ous toil  spent  in  her  borders.  For  we  can 
safely  neglect  his  boyhood  and  early  education, 
or  at  least  leave  them  in  other  hands,  as  being 
without  incident  or  real  significance.  Doubt- 
less many  a  clue  to  his  character  could  be  found 
in  the  details  of  his  childhood  in  his  pious  home 
at  Plattsburg,  N.  Y.,  and  of  his  adolescence 
[4] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

under  the  devout  and  imaginative  Muhlen- 
berg  at  College  Point,  Flushing;  but  details 
are  lacking,  and  there  is  literally  no  one  alive 
who  can  supply  them.  A  few  lines,  taken 
from  the  "Horae  Scholasticae "  of  March  8, 
1895,  will  give  us  the  main  facts  of  his  life  up 
to  the  date  of  his  call  to  the  Rectorship  of 
St.  Paul's  School. 

"Dr.  Henry  Augustus  Coit  was  born  Janu- 
ary 20,  1830,  at  Wilmington,  Del.,  where  his 
father,  the  late  Rev.  Joseph  Rowland  Coit, 
D.D.,  was  rector  of  St.  Andrew's  Church. 
In  1832  his  family  went  to  Plattsburg,  N.  Y., 
his  father  having  been  elected  rector  of  Trin- 
ity Church  in  that  city.  There  his  youth  was 
passed  until  his  fifteenth  year,  when  he  was 
sent  to  the  well-known  boarding-school  at 
College  Point,  Flushing,  L.  L,  under  Dr. 
Muhlenberg.  In  due  course  he  went  to  the 
University  of  Pennsylvania,  but,  his  health 
giving  out,  he  spent  a  winter  in  the  South, 
chiefly  in  Georgia.  On  his  return,  he  ac- 
cepted the  position  of  assistant  professor  of 
the  ancient  languages  at  St.  James's  College, 

[5] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

Maryland.  He  remained  there  about  two 
years,  and  then,  in  1851,  assumed  charge  of  a 
large  parish  school  under  the  direction  of  Dr., 
afterwards  Bishop,  Bowman  at  Lancaster,  Pa. 
There  he  met  Miss  Mary  Bowman  Wheeler, 
to  whom  he  was  subsequently  married. 
While  at  Lancaster  he  was  ordained  Deacon 
by  Bishop  Alonzo  Potter,  the  ceremony 
taking  place  at  St.  James's  Church,  Phila- 
delphia. His  ordination  to  the  priest- 
hood followed  one  year  later,  in  1854,  in 
Plattsburg,  Bishop  Horatio  Potter  officiat- 
ing. He  was  at  this  time  serving  efficiently 
as  missionary  at  Ellenburgh  and  Centreville, 
Clinton  County,  N.  Y.,  having  recently  left 
his  charge  at  Lancaster.  Here  he  remained 
until,  having  been  invited  by  the  Trustees  of 
St.  Paul's  School  to  become  its  first  Rector, 
he  came  to  Concord,  April  3,  1856.  His 
marriage  had  taken  place  one  week  earlier, 
March  27,  in  the  Church  of  the  Epiphany  at 
Philadelphia." 

As  the  public  life  of  Dr.  Coit  was  wholly 
uneventful,  and  as  his  contribution  to  history 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

was  limited  to  his  long  term  of  intensive 
labor  in  an  atmosphere  almost  conventual, 
it  is  obvious  that  our  task  will  be  to  deal 
with  character  rather  than  action,  —  with 
character  as  illustrated  in  the  functions  of 
administrator,  teacher  and  pastor.  And  yet 
one  hesitates  to  analyze  Dr.  Coit  too  inti- 
mately; it  seems  almost  unfair.  In  his  life- 
time no  one  ventured  to  discuss  him  in 
public;  in  his  presence  it  would  have  been 
impossible.  He  had  the  secret  of  modesty, 
and  his  great  reserve  smothered  all  efforts  at 
probing.  Moreover,  any  attempt  to  explain 
Dr.  Coit  to  one  who  had  never  seen  him  will 
be  difficult,  for  he  combined  qualities  that 
are  not  often  found  together.  John  Jay 
Chapman's  rather  transcendental  picture  of 
his  old  school-master  in  his  monograph  en- 
titled "School  Influence,"  is  a  true  one  on 
the  whole,  and  is  indeed  a  great  tribute, 
supplementing  in  its  idealism  and  loftiness 
of  vision  the  more  commonplace  apprecia- 
tions of  the  rest  of  us.  But  such  a  picture 
is  incomprehensible  to  most  men,  and  lifts 

[7] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

its  subject  to  such  a  degree  that  Dr.  Coit 
seems  to  walk  across  the  distant  horizon  of 
school  life  with  a  spectral  effect  not  unlike 
that  of  the  Wandering  Jew  in  Sue's  novel, 
or  of  Moses  in  Georg  Ebers'  "Uarda."  No, 
Dr.  Coit  was  a  real  man,  with  defects  and 
limitations,  and  he  would  have  been  greatly 
astonished  that  his  character  needed  anato- 
mizing of  any  sort;  it  was  all  very  simple  to 
him.  Such  a  consideration,  however,  will  not 
deter  us  from  the  effort  to  bring  out  what 
was  really  great  in  him,  what  lifted  him  head 
and  shoulders  above  most  men  of  his  type. 

Surely,  the  basis  of  Dr.  Coit's  character  is 
to  be  found  in  his  Puritanism.  His  ancestors 
on  both  sides  were  evangelical,  Bible-reading 
New  Englanders,  and  his  passion  for  right- 
eousness was  a  natural  result  of  birth  and 
environment.  On  such  a  stock  was  grafted, 
as  time  went  on,  the  emotional  and  romantic 
temperament  of  the  ecclesiastic,  such  as  the 
Oxford  movement  begot  in  men  of  historic 
sense  and  native  mysticism.  This  is  a  strong 
combination,  and  to  it  can  be  traced  most  of 

[8] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

the  features  of  Dr.  Coit's  spiritual  outfit.  An 
alumnus  writing  about  his  old  master  will  in- 
evitably recall  the  qualities  that  touched  him 
individually,  that  most  affected  his  own  life. 
He  may  feel  that  he  owes  a  great  debt  to 
the  man  that  presided  over  the  scene  of  his 
boyhood  life  at  St.  Paul's,  and  yet  he  has 
perhaps  never  analyzed  nor  confessed  it. 
What  was  it  that  hypnotized  boys  and 
prodded  their  consciences?  Well,  the  feeling 
of  an  old  boy  towards  Dr.  Coit  and  the  old 
school  is  compacted  of  the  sum  of  many 
memories,  of  memories  of  good  things  freely 
given  and  unconsciously  received,  of  learn- 
ing imparted,  of  high  principles  absorbed,  of 
shelter  from  evil,  of  happy  days  and  healthy 
sport,  in  short,  of  a  fine  ideal  which  time  and 
adversity  cannot  destroy  even  though  they 
obscure.  Out  of  this  general  welter  will 
emerge  the  figure  of  the  Doctor,  who  vital- 
ized it  all:  his  alert  intuitions  that  pene- 
trated the  most  callous  nature;  his  insight 
into  motive;  his  fanatical  purity,  his  probes 
to  vanity,  utter  routing  of  the  forward  and 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS   COIT 

bumptious,  his  irony,  sometimes  cruel,  for 
the  self-complacent  and  pragmatic,  his  aggres- 
sive challenge  to  duty,  gentle  self-revelation 
to  the  over-shy  and  reticent,  compelling  sym- 
pathy, sustaining  hand  to  the  weak,  apprecia- 
tion of  ability  and  talent  with  cautionary 
signals;  and,  beyond  all,  a  pervasive  atmo- 
sphere of  life  lived  in  an  empyrean,  well 
above  the  sordid  and  uterre  a  terre."  All 
this  may  sound  strange  to  some  ears  to-day, 
but  it  did  not  sound  so  at  the  time  of  Dr. 
Coit's  death,  for  it  was  the  burden  of  all 
utterances  about  him  from  press  and  pulpit. 
Canon  Douglas,  in  a  letter  to  the  New  York 
Evening  Post,  declared  that  "if  any  man  in 
America  deserved  a  public  funeral,  it  was  the 
late  Rector  of  St.  Paul's  School."  Bishop 
Doane  averred  that  Dr.  Coit  had  laid  the 
"deepest  foundations  and  built  the  best 
superstructures  that  have  been  laid  or  built 
for  the  Christian  training  of  boys."  And 
this  from  a  writer  in  the  Boston  Transcript: 
"The  great  school  that  he  built  may  seem 
to  the  world  the  chief  evidence  of  his  ability, 
[10] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

but  to  these  old  boys  the  stamp  of  his  char- 
acter set  on  their  lives  and  enduring  unchanged 
amid  the  passing  influence  of  later  years  will 
be  the  great  proof  of  his  worth  as  servant  of 
God  and  leader  of  men."  Dr.  Roberts,  in 
the  Concord  Monitor,  said  that  "the  charac- 
ters of  men  who  have  come  from  St.  Paul's 
School  were  forged  in  his  heart."  Dr.  Fergu- 
son dwelt  on  "his  almost  awful  righteousness 
and  his  enthusiasm  for  righteousness  in 
others."  Dr.  Hall  Harrison  attributed  the 
secret  of  his  influence  to  the  "spirituality 
and  unworldliness  of  his  nature.  He  lived 
close  to  the  cross  of  his  Redeemer."  The 
Trustees  of  Groton  School  declare  in  formal 
Resolutions  that  "he  has  given  to  American 
teachers,  especially  those  in  Church  schools, 
a  great  and  noble  ideal  of  their  office. 
Through  the  influence  of  his  leadership 
other  schools  have  been  founded,  and  to 
his  memory  Groton  turns  with  deep  grati- 
tude." The  Manchester  Union  says  that 
"The  state  will  mourn  his  death  as  that  of  a 
benefactor,  for,  in  the  work  which  he  has  done 

EH] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

and  perpetuated  by  a  wise  establishment,  he 
has  honored  New  Hampshire  with  exceed- 
ing great  honor."  Finally,  an  editorial  in 
The  Churchman  pronounces  him  greater  than 
Arnold. 

The  comparison  between  Arnold  and  Coit 
is  inevitable;  they  had  worked  in  kindred 
fields  and  had  made  a  like  contribution  to 
the  cause  of  secondary  education  in  their 
respective  countries.  Yet  the  men  were  in 
some  respects  unlike,  and  the  parallel  is  use- 
ful chiefly  in  enabling  us  to  interpret  a  less 
known  person  through  contrast  with  a  better 
known  person  of  the  same  general  type. 
They  agreed  in  a  common  enthusiasm  for  the 
moral  education  of  youth,  and  in  the  con- 
viction that  the  Humanities  furnished  the 
best  medium  for  the  training  of  the  mind. 
But  the  stage,  the  methods  and  the  motives 
were  different.  Dr.  Arnold  devoted  fourteen 
years  of  his  life  to  reforming  a  corrupt  and 
custom-ridden  school  of  400  years'  standing; 
Dr.  Coit  gave  forty  years  to  founding  and 

[12] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

orienting  a  new  one  on  lines  almost  novel 
in  this  country.  The  roles  were  different 
and  each  showed  masterly  wisdom.  Had  po- 
sitions been  exchanged,  neither  might  have 
succeeded.  Dr.  Arnold  worked  in  a  fixed 
society  and  in  an  ancient  system;  Dr.  Coit 
labored  amid  crude  social  conditions  and 
created  a  type  of  school,  at  first  deemed  an 
exotic,  but  now  become  popular.  Dr.  Arnold 
was  a  notable  scholar,  historian  and  publi- 
cist; Dr.  Coit,  though  unquestionably  a 
scholar,  never  wrote  a  book.  Dr.  Arnold  had 
a  consuming  interest  in  outside  questions  and 
took  a  prominent  part  in  many  famous  con- 
troversies; Dr.  Coit  confined  himself  in  an  ' 
extraordinary  degree  to  his  one  mission.  Dr. 
Arnold  was  a  Latitudinarian  and  a  radical, 
with  a  temperament  prone  to  doubt.  Dr. 
Coit  was  conservative  to  the  backbone,  with 
a  fiery  faith  that  fed  on  the  Greek  Testament 
and  Thomas  a  Kempis.  And  yet  these  two 
men  met  on  the  common  ground  of  passion- 
ate zeal  for  righteousness,  and  of  firm  con- 
viction that  education  is  worthless  without  it. 

[13] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

Like  Arnold,  too,  and  like  his  still  more 
eminent  son,  Matthew,  Dr.  Coit  accepted  as 
a  settled  dogma  that  Latin  was  the  eternally 
proper  instrument  of  mental  training,  quite 
forgetting  that,  when  Dean  Colet,  Erasmus 
and  other  Humanists  made  it  the  basis  of 
secular  education,  they  had  no  choice  but 
to  select  that  tongue  which  not  only  was  the 
Esperanto  of  scholars,  but  which  at  the  Re- 
naissance treasured  beneath  its  symbols  all 
extant  knowledge,  whether  fact  or  philosophy. 
In  truth,  Dr.  Coit  and  both  the  Arnolds  be- 
long a  little  to  the  pre-scientific  era  of  educa- 
tion. We  shall  have  occasion  to  refer  to  Dr. 
Arnold  more  than  once  in  the  development 
of  our  subject. 

It  is  now  nearly  sixty  years  since  the 
founding  of  St.  Paul's  School,  a  period  of 
time  long  enough  to  afford  perspective  and 
data  adequate  for  impartial  generalization. 
The  original  trustees  are  long  since  dead, 
and,  with  a  few  exceptions,  their  immediate 
successors  and  co-workers  are  old  and  pass- 
ing. Memories  are  imperfect,  experiences 

[14] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

vary,  and  temperaments  are  diversely  sus- 
ceptible. If  the  intention  and  spirit  of  the 
Fathers  is  to  be  caught  from  living  lips, 
there  is  no  time  to  be  lost.  A  separate 
"paper"  might  well  be  devoted  to  Dr.  Shat- 
tuck  and  the  Boston  group  of  Trustees. 
The  school  was  indeed  fortunate  in  her 
founder,  George  Cheyne  Shattuck,  the  dis- 
tinguished physician.  His  own  education  had 
been  liberal  and  thorough,  and  partook  of 
the  best  that  could  be  given  at  the  Boston 
Latin  School,  the  Round  Hill  School  at 
Northampton  and  Harvard  College.  Pos- 
sibly as  a  Round-Hiller  he  may  have  im- 
bibed through  George  Bancroft  a  little  of 
the  community  feeling  of  Brook  Farm.  At 
all  events,  he  determined  to  found  a  school 
in  the  country,  where  the  training  of  body, 
soul  and  spirit  should  be  equally  accom- 
plished; where,  as  he  said,  "green  fields  and 
trees  may  be  used  to  teach  of  Him  who 
made  them,"  and  where  fraternal  peace  may 
be  the  proper  fruit  of  comparative  isolation. 
The  school  once  fairly  launched,  Dr.  Shattuck 

[15] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

modestly  retired  into  the  background.  Al- 
though he  was  never  a  Trustee,  for  nearly 
forty  years  he  was  the  constant  upholder  of 
the  first  Rector  in  all  his  plans,  and  the 
pressure  of  his  rare  elevation  and  singleness 
of  heart  must  have  been  felt  in  all  the 
initial  development  of  the  place. 

Over  such  a  projected  school,  beginning 
with  three  boys,  Henry  Augustus  Coit  was 
invited  to  preside.  "He  was  told,  'You 
have  possession  of  land  and  buildings,  but  we 
cannot  promise  you  a  salary,  and  you  must 
derive  your  support  from  the  fees  of  schol- 
ars.' He  began  the  work  under  these  con- 
ditions. It  was  emphatically  a  work  of 
faith."  He  was  but  twenty-six  years  of  age, 
and  had  had  no  special  training  for  academic 
life,  if  we  except  a  short  term  of  service  at 
St.  James's  College  and  three  years  at  a 
parish  day-school  at  Lancaster,  Pa.  Perhaps 
he  was  secured  at  the  psychological  moment; 
a  few  years  later,  and  his  retiring,  studious 
nature  might  well  have  led  him  to  decline 
the  appointment.  But  fate  willed  that  he 

[16] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

should  be  "taken  at  the  flood/'  and  the 
growing  school  speedily  furnished  scope  for 
all  his  powers. 

Of  Dr.  Coit's  intellectual  equipment  for  his 
task  a  few  words  may  be  said  here,  although 
it  will  naturally  be  disclosed  everywhere  in 
the  course  of  this  study.  He  had  received 
the  usual  classical  education  of  boys  of  his 
time,  along  with  the  special  advantage  of 
study  under  the  direction  of  a  learned 
father.  He  must  have  been  a  hard  reader 
from  the  beginning.  No  American  boy  of 
the  period  could  hope  to  get  the  foundation 
that  came  so  easily  to  his  brothers  across  the 
water,  which  developed  in  Arnold  an  idolatry 
for  Aristotle,  which  put  Gladstone  at  the  feet 
of  Homer,  and  made  Dean  Church  "keep  a 
throne  apart  for  Lucretius."  But  Dr.  Coit 
had  had  far  more  than  the  routine  grounding 
in  Latin  and  Greek,  and  possessed  in  a 
marked  degree  the  divine  fury  of  the  clas- 
sics. Not  a  critical  scholar  in  the  German 
sense,  he  was  very  strong  on  the  cultural 
side,  and,  as  we  shall  see  later,  his  enthu- 

[17] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

siasm  kindled  an  answering  flame  in  the 
minds  of  his  immediate  pupils. 

In  modern  languages  he  was  not  strong. 
His  French  was  the  classic  French  of  the 
"Provincial  Letters,"  of  Racine  and  Moliere, 
and  perhaps,  of  Massillon  and  Lacordaire. 
I/ Abbe  Constantin  doubtless  appealed  to 
him,  but  the  modern  French  realistic  novel 
was  in  his  eyes  an  abomination,  something 
to  be  taken  up  carefully  with  a  pair  of  tongs 
and  tossed  into  the  fire.  As  for  German,  it 
was  scarcely  taught  in  his  boyhood,  and, 
although  he  made  sporadic  attempts  to  study 
it,  he  virtually  never  knew  it.  His  reading 
of  German  poetry  or  of  the  German  theo- 
logians was  in  his  vernacular.  He  was  not 
ignorant  of  science  and  mathematics;  he 
could  and  did  teach  the  latter  in  early  days 
when  it  was  necessary  to  fill  a  master's  place 
temporarily.  Of  what  are  called  accomplish- 
ments, he  once  told  the  writer  that  he  had 
none,  that  they  did  not  run  in  his  blood. 
And  yet  he  played  the  piano  well  enough  to 
enable  him  to  take  the  organist's  place  at 

[18] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

the  old  chapel  organ  occasionally.  But  the 
simple  chants  and  hymns  were  very  quaintly 
rendered,  and  with  a  staccato  touch  and  roll- 
ing arpeggio  treatment.  It  may  be  added 
also  that  he  took  his  time  in  beginning  each 
canticle,  since  he  would  allow  nothing  to 
interfere  with  his  complete  devotional  sur- 
render to  the  prayers  and  lessons.  One  can 
hardly  say  that  he  was  artistic  in  tempera- 
ment; his  ethical  side  was  almost  too  strong 
for  that.  The  Dresden  Madonna  no  doubt 
was  his  delight,  but  Rubens,  with  his  frank 
animalism,  was  far  too  gross.  He  must  find 
the  moral  and  religious  in  anything  worth 
admiring.  Dr.  Arnold  went  much  further  in 
this  direction  than  Dr.  Coit.  It  is  said  that 
none  of  the  cathedrals  of  continental  Europe 
ever  evoked  a  word  of  enthusiasm  from  him, 
or  stirred  an  emotion,  with  the  exception  of 
Cologne.  And  so  of  the  other  plastic  art; 
Dr.  Coit's  Greek  studies  gave  him  a  Greek 
feeling  for  poetry,  but  scarcely  for  sculpture. 
The  writer  remembers  on  a  very  hot  Sunday, 
many  years  ago,  when  he  was  standing  by 

[19] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

Dr.  Coit  on  the  bank  and  watching  the  boys 
bathing,  that  the  Doctor  said  rather  shyly, 
"The  human  form  is  not  beautiful,  is  it?" 
This  is  certainly  not  very  Greek.  Accord- 
ingly, a  Madonna,  a  Pieta,  a  Moses,  possibly 
the  Apollo  Belvidere,  would  win  his  indorse- 
ment; but  a  Venus  de  Milo,  or  a  Cupid  and 
Psyche,  never  in  the  world!  In  fact,  he  was 
morbidly  sensitive  to  the  suggestion  of  any 
divorce  between  art  and  ethics.  With  him, 
all  impure  art  was  bad  art,  and  to  read 
authors  like  Flaubert  and  De  Maupassant 
for  style,  as  sometimes  people  are  recom- 
mended to  do,  seemed  to  him  absurd  as  well 
as  wrong;  he  would  as  soon  have  consorted 
with  Satan  for  manners.  Probably  it  was 
not  art  itself  that  appealed  directly  to  his 
esthetic  sensibility,  but  something  about  art 
which  he  thought  ennobling  and  which  made 
for  culture.  Raphael,  Phidias,  and  Beet- 
hoven were  names  to  conjure  with,  but  they 
carried  perhaps  a  little  of  the  aroma  of  the 
famous  "Du  grec,  O  ciel!"  in  "Les  Femmes 
Savantes." 
[20] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

However,  it  would  not  be  just  to  dogma- 
tize in  this  matter,  for  there  was  little  in  this 
country,  in  the  early  days  of  St.  Paul's 
School,  to  evoke  the  latent  art-feeling  of 
anybody.  It  would,  indeed,  be  history  as 
well  as  justice  to  say,  that  the  arrival  of 
Augustus  Swift  as  a  master  in  1874  brought 
the  first  real  contribution  in  the  direction  of 
the  fine  arts.  His  many  esthetic  gifts  and 
aggressive  joy  in  the  employment  of  them 
operated  like  an  April  shower  upon  the  rather 
arid  soil  of  our  puritan  foundation.  Hence- 
forward the  beautiful  was  to  be  a  part  of 
our  endowment.  Not  that  his  taste  was 
impeccable,  but  he  loved  music  and  painting 
and  poetry,  and  lived  in  the  atmosphere  of 
them.  And  back  of  these  tastes  there  was 
so  warm  and  Christian  a  nature  that  his 
rather  sensuous  contribution  did  not  strike 
us  as  altogether  too  Pagan.  His  early  death 
was  a  great  loss,  and  caused  genuine  grief 
in  the  hearts  of  all  connected  with  St.  Paul's. 

From  what  has  been  said  one  might  natu- 
rally expect  to  find  on  the  school  estate  a 

[21] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

certain  evidence  of  indifference  to  artistic 
form,  a  disregard  of  exterior  effect  in  the 
early  architecture  of  buildings,  in  groupings, 
and  in  the  arrangement  of  roads,  banks  and 
streams.  Certainly,  no  building  could  claim 
any  great  beauty  prior  to  the  erection  of  the 
new  Chapel  in  1888.  Utility  had  been  the 
great  consideration,  and  back  of  utility  had 
always  lain  the  moral  and  intellectual  welfare 
of  the  boys.  This  was  Dr.  Coit's  obsession, 
and  everything  else  might  well  wait.  Could 
there  have  been  a  more  fortunate  obsession? 
Could  anything  else  have  laid  so  strong  a 
foundation  for  the  great  school  which  he  was 
destined  to  create?  And  the  years  rolled  on, 
and  Dr.  Coit  grew  with  his  work.  Beyond 
all  expectation  came  scholars  from  all  parts 
of  the  country,  and  fresh  scholars  demanded 
enlarged  accommodation  and  more  instructors, 
until,  at  the  death  of  the  first  Rector,  the  roll 
of  the  school  was  nearly  what  it  is  now. 
Three  hundred  and  forty  boys  constitute, 
according  to  the  ingenious  mathematics  of 
Edward  Thring,  both  the  limit  and  the  ideal 
[22] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

number  of  boys  that  can  be  handled  in  safety 
by  one  man;  and  our  present  rather  homo- 
geneous accommodations,  as  they  suffice  for 
this,  seem  happily  to  invite  us  to  this  as  a 
reasonable  policy. 

What  Dr.  Coit  contributed  to  the  cause  of 
education  in  the  forty  years  devoted  to  St. 
Paul's  School  is,  not  so  much  a  system,  as  a 
life;  what  is  implicit  in  the  best  secondary 
education  became  explicit  in  him.  He  was 
not  much  given  to  organization,  and  like 
Arnold  regarded  the  processes  of  education 
as  dynamical  rather  than  mechanical.  But 
he  gave  himself  to  the  full.  He  almost  never 
left  the  place,  and  with  difficulty  could  be 
persuaded  to  preach  in  a  city  pulpit.  Prob- 
ably his  natural  shrinking  from  publicity  had 
much  to  do  with  this.  The  writer  has  a 
vague  remembrance  of  his  rushing  into  print 
at  some  lively  moment  of  the  Civil  War  in  de- 
fence of  Dr.  Dix  of  Trinity  Church,  New  York, 
and  of  his  being  rewarded  with  a  volley  of 
abuse  from  the  local  press,  terminating  in  the 
words  (horribile  dictu):  "Go  it,  Coit!" 

[23] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

Such  a  complete  absorption  in  his  mission 
was  not  without  its  disabilities.  A  man  loses 
much  from  not  rubbing  up  against  his  fellows; 
without  exchange  of  views,  without  the  cor- 
rectives of  opposition  and  rebuke  there  is  a 
condition  of  mental  isolation  from  which  he 
must  suffer.  Of  course  there  are  compensa- 
tions. Some  loss  of  time,  the  penalty  of  so- 
cial intercourse,  is  escaped,  and  a  habit  of 
decision,  without  excessive  judicial  weighing, 
is  fostered.  In  any  event,  ultimate  responsi- 
bility cannot  be  shared.  A  strong  man  can- 
not uncover  all  his  secrets,  take  counsel  of 
every  one;  were  he  to  do  so,  he  might 
win  more  affection,  but  he  would  have 
less  authority;  a  smug  peace  would  pre- 
vail, but  the  institution  would  suffer.  Dr. 
Coit  was  executive  and  cabinet  combined, 
and  he  patiently  bore  his  own  burdens. 
But  burdens  they  were.  Without  money 
or  endowment,  and  without  the  accessories 
that  to-day  make  for  popularity,  he  gradu- 
ally fashioned  the  great  school  and  the 
great  body  of  devoted  alumni  which  are 

[24] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

his  monument.  And  in  his  great  effort,  he 
shortened  his  days. 

If  the  first  Rector  had  been  willing  to 
share  with  others  his  responsibilities,  if  he 
had  made  a  little  more  use  of  modern  aids 
and  short-cuts,  and  had  mingled  a  little  more 
relaxation  with  his  continuous  labor,  he  might 
have  served  ten  years  longer.  But,  as  we 
look  at  it  now,  it  is  quite  conceivable  that 
further  service  would  not  have  added  to  the 
value  of  his  work.  Perhaps  his  contribution 
was  fully  made.  He  was  spared  the  sorrow- 
ful consciousness  of  any  decline  in  his  powers; 
no  one  has  ever  said  that  his  grip  was  loosen- 
ing. "Felix  in  opportunitate  mortis.*' 

The  circumstances  of  Dr.  Coit's  death  have 
always  seemed  to  the  writer  a  little  out  of  re- 
lation to  his  life.  One  would  have  expected 
that  a  life  so  full  of  piety,  so  marked  by 
strict  performance  of  religious  duties  and  ob- 
servances, would  be  followed  by  a  death  of 
calm  serenity,  featured  with  all  the  consola- 
tion of  sacrament  and  scenes  of  intimate  love. 
But  it  was  far  different.  Somehow,  the  aus- 

[25] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

tere  soul,  that  had  made,  in  the  philosophical 
sense  of  Socrates,  a  death  of  life,  did  not  find 
a  great  change  in  death  itself.  He  simply, 
like  Jacob,  "gathered  up  his  feet  into  the 
bed"  and  was  gone.  A  short  week,  without 
suffering,  without  talk,  without  a  message; 
that  was  all!  The  dramatic  was  wholly  lack- 
ing. How  easy  it  would  be,  after  the  manner 
of  the  pious  mediaeval  annalists,  to  give  a 
different  turn  to  it  all!  His  life  lends  itself 
easily  to  the  myth,  and  one  might  make  the 
wish  father  to  the  thought  in  constructing  a 
legend,  that  one  had  learned  from  a  witness 
that  his  end  was  something  like  the  follow- 
ing: "A  few  minutes  before  he  breathed  his 
last,  he  opened  his  eyes  and  said  in  a  clear, 
firm  voice:  'I  leave  the  administration  of  the 
place  which  I  have  loved  so  dearly  to  my 
brother  Joseph  and  to  my  faithful  helpers, 
in  perfect  confidence  that  they  will  bring  to 
full  fruition  the  ideals  which  I  have  so  poorly 
and  imperfectly  begun/  '  This  was  no  doubt 
about  the  way  he  felt,  but,  for  some  reason, 
his  lips  were  sealed.  Surely  a  life  of  such 
[26] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

self-renunciation,  and  such  blamelessness  mer- 
ited well  of  Death,  and  it  is  a  matter  of  real 
thankfulness  that  he  escaped  all  that  was 
sordid  and  humiliating,  and  could  pass 
quickly  to  the  other  world,  as  one  "folding 
his  tent." 

"I  have  been  dying  for  years,  and  now  I 
shall  begin  to  live." 


[27] 


II 

ADMINISTRATOR 

A  FORMAL  history  of  St.  Paul's  School 
can  be  compiled  at  any  time  by  any 
one  who  will  devote  himself  to  working  over 
the  material  that  may  be  drawn  abundantly 
from  five  sources.  These  sources  are:  "Me- 
morials of  St.  Paul's  School"  by  Joseph  How- 
land  Coit,  D.D.;  "An  Account  of  St.  Paul's 
School,"  by  James  M.  Lamberton;  "Mem- 
ories of  a  Great  School-Master,"  by  James  P. 
Conover;  the  "Horae  Scholasticae "  in  forty- 
eight  volumes;  and  finally,  the  "Rural 
Record,"  a  diary  of  daily  events,  which  has 
been  kept  with  considerable  minuteness  by 
one  and  another  recorder  from  the  earliest 
days  of  the  school.  It  seems  to  the  writer 
that  such  a  history,  except  for  its  encyclo- 
pedic value,  would  answer  no  popular  appeal, 
and  is  scarcely  called  for  as  yet.  The  cur- 
[28] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

rent  events  of  school  life  are,  at  best,  of  pa- 
rochial interest  only,  and  may  be  found  at 
need  in  the  several  records  mentioned  above. 
In  an  unusual  degree  the  life  of  Dr.  Coit  is 
the  history  of  the  school.  To  few  men  is  it 
given  to  lay  the  foundation  and  prescribe  the 
regulations  of  an  institution,  and  then  to  ad- 
minister these  regulations  for  the  first  forty 
years.  It  is  like  the  inventor  of  the  aero- 
plane, first  planning  his  machine,  and  then, 
with  full  knowledge  of  each  screw  and  rivet, 
trying  it  out  by  frequent  and  continuous  use. 
In  both  cases  the  handling  is  the  vital  point. 
It  has  already  been  intimated  that  Dr. 
Coit  was  no  innovator;  his  theory  of  secular 
education  was  not  materially  different  from 
that  which  prevailed  generally  in  the  New 
England  of  his  day.  He  felt  that  educa- 
tional training  rested  on  few  and  simple 
principles.  In  his  system  Diligence  and  Duty 
covered  pretty  much  all  that  was  necessary  on 
the  boy's  part,  while,  on  the  teacher's  part, 
sound  knowledge,  with  the  will  and  capacity 
to  impart  it,  constituted  the  whole  equipment. 

[29] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

Fortunately  for  his  temperament  the  modern 
passion  for  analysis  and  organization  had  not 
begun  to  get  in  its  perfect  work.  Books  on 
pedagogy  probably  bored  him,  as  they  did 
both  the  Arnolds.  He  was  willing  to  spend 
himself  and  all  who  served  under  him  to  the 
full,  provided  the  ideal  that  he  set  before 
himself  was  furthered  thereby;  if  the  engine 
was  running  smoothly,  he  did  not  worry 
much  over  the  expenditure  of  fuel.  The  con- 
sequent unscientific  waste  was  God's  affair. 
What  he  would  have  made  out  of  the  modern 
Gospel  of  Efficiency,  we  can  only  surmise. 
Some  one  has  said  that  every  man  is  born 

either   a   Platonist   or   an   Aristotelian.     The 

* 

explanation  of  Dr.  Coit  lies  in  the  fact  that  he 
had  a  consuming  sense  of  the  value  of  the  hu- 
man soul;  every  other  consideration  was  sub- 
ordinate to  this.  Organization  and  material 
improvements  at  the  school  were  but  means. 
Though  systematic  in  his  personal  habits,  he 
was  perhaps  a  little  too  scornful  of  system  in 
education.  His  own  gifts  as  an  educator 
were  so  remarkable  that  he  may  easily  have 
[30] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

forgotten  the  value  of  system  to  the  less 
gifted.  Good  organization  makes  for  econ- 
omy of  moral  effort;  and  moral  force,  while 
unquestionably  the  noblest  of  endowments,  is 
comparatively  rare.  It  might,  therefore,  be 
said,  with  some  truth,  that  St.  Paul's  School 
of  the  first  forty  years  was  a  place  unscien- 
tifically organized  but  splendidly  adminis- 
tered. Buildings  were  put  up  when  needed, 
and  paid  for  out  of  gifts  and  savings  which 
rightfully  belonged  either  to  masters'  sal- 
aries or  proper  hygienic  accessories.  No  great 
attention  was  given  to  any  future  develop- 
ment of  the  premises  as  related  to  these 
buildings.  The  new  chapel  should  be  beauti- 
ful as  becomes  the  House  of  God,  but  the 
main  thing  would  always  be  what  went  on 
within  it.  A  new  infirmary  came  in  due 
time,  but  Dr.  Coit's  mind  was  concentrated 
upon  the  moral  and  professional  qualifica- 
tions of  the  doctor  and  nurses  rather  than 
upon  the  arrangement  of  rooms,  fireplaces, 
baths,  absence  of  germ-harboring  corners, 
and  all  that  modern  science  deems  essential. 

[31] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

Sickness,  he  thought,  came  from  God,  or,  at 
least,  was  permitted  by  God,  and  he  had 
perhaps  more  confidence  in  prayer  than  in 
the  doctor.  It  is  doubtful  whether  he 
thought  any  one  could  catch  cold  in  Chapel 
if  he  was  truly  devout.  Such  a  flaming  faith 
as  this  implies  will  bring  a  smile  to  sophis- 
ticated lips,  but  it  is  scarcely  an  exaggerated 
statement,  and  it  explains  the  man. 

He  would  not  have  rejected  the  implica- 
tions of,  what  H.  G.  Wells  calls,  "that  blessed 
word  Efficiency,"  if  he  were  allowed  to  define 
it.  But  he  would  have  insisted  that  the  two 
terms  of  the  problem  should  be  properly  ar- 
ticulated, that  there  was  such  a  thing  as  a 
proper  waste  of  force  as  well  as  a  proper 
economy,  that  things  spiritual  are  not  to  be 
handled  like  things  material.  For  instance, 
he  regarded  time  as  a  trust  not  to  be  squan- 
dered, but  he  would  cheerfully  surrender  his 
precious  hours,  hours  that  other  educators 
husband  for  study  or  devote  to  outside 
propagandism,  to  work  over  individual  boys. 
Always  in  his  Study,  he  never  denied  him- 

[32] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS   COIT 

self  to  any  one,  boy  or  master,  that  needed 
help  or  advice.  And  yet  he  was  a  man  who 
loved  a  book  with  a  rare  passion;  but  duty 
and  love  were  still  stronger  passions.  No 
sacrifice  on  his  part  was  too  great,  if  one 
boy  could  be  saved.  This  is  certainly  not 
sound  Efficiency  doctrine. 

He  probably  would  have  made  merry  — 
and  he  had  a  dangerous  talent  for  irony  — 
over  the  word  Efficiency,  and  would  have 
poked  fun  at  those  who  make  a  fetish  of  it. 
He  might  have  asked  seriously  whether  there 
was  not  a  danger  of  destroying  the  very  things 
that  make  life  worth  living,  when  one  regards 
the  amount  of  product  as  the  chief  measure 
of  success,  and  makes  the  laborer,  whether 
with  the  hand  or  head,  a  mere  machine  or 
formula.  The  quality  of  the  product  was  to 
be  considered  along  with  the  amount,  and 
was  of  far  greater  value.  Dr.  Coit  was 
never  ambitious  for  a  large  school,  but  he 
was  extremely  anxious  that  St.  Paul's  should 
be  a  good  school;  the  school  grew  simply 
because  it  was  a  good  school.  Specious  sue- 

[33] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

cesses,  such  as  prominence  in  athletics,  com- 
mendation in  the  Press,  social  importance,  big 
gatherings  and  speeches,  did  not  appeal  to 
him.  He  knew  what  kind  of  a  foundation 
it  was  wise  to  lay,  if  the  institution  was  to 
endure,  and  his  wisdom  has  been  amply  justi- 
fied. The  doctrine  of  Efficiency,  in  its  zeal 
for  practical  results,  may  easily  overlook 
something;  in  fact,  it  has  no  scales  in  which 
to  weigh  things  spiritual.  Test  some  great 
historical  events  by  the  law  of  efficiency, 
efficiency  meaning  "effectual  agency."  Would 
any  one  have  said  beforehand  that  the  Ref- 
ormation or  the  French  Revolution,  with 
their  waste  of  blood  and  treasure,  with 
their  toll  of  sorrow  and  suffering,  would  be 
in  the  line  of  Efficiency?  And  yet  the  prin- 
ciples of  religious  and  political  freedom  had 
to  come,  and  the  resultant  blessings  are  worth 
it  all.  A  plausible  case  may  be  made  out 
for  the  statement  that  the  introduction  of 
Christianity  by  inculcating  the  virtues  of 
submission  and  humility,  by  its  transference 
of  happiness  to  the  world  to  come,  checked 
[34] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

for  1500  years  the  development  of  material 
civilization  for  which  the  Greeks  from  Aris- 
totle down  had  in  numberless  ways  furnished 
the  preliminary  studies.  And  yet  no  material 
progress  could  have  compensated  the  ab- 
sence of  the  spiritual  and  ethical  forces 
that  have  glorified  modern  times.  The  real 
efficiency  had  a  different  goal.  Take  the 
Incarnation  itself.  The  consistent  worship- 
per at  the  shrine  of  Efficiency  must  have 
long  since  observed  the  lack  of  proportion 
between  the  sacrifice  of  the  Son  of  God,  the 
infinite  one,  and  the  salvation  of  the  human 
race.  And  yet  the  mystery  of  it  all  does 
not  preclude  our  belief  in  its  necessity  and 
beneficence.  The  emancipation  of  the  Ameri- 
can negro  was  not  a  measure  of  economic 
efficiency,  but  no  one  is  much  troubled  over 
that  redoubtable  fact. 

The  above  reflections  are  made,  not  with 
the  idea  of  proving  anything,  but  simply  to 
illustrate  the  fact  that  moral  ideals  are  sui 
generis  and  carry  their  own  sanctions  with 
them.  And  so  our  first  Rector,  although  he 

[35] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

did  not  leave  a  school  bristling  with  up-to- 
date  ideas,  did  something  far  more  potential; 
he  left  a  subtle  moral  deposit  in  the  hearts 
of  3,000  young  Americans,  which  has  already 
made  its  mark  upon  our  country. 

No  attempt  will  be  made  here  to  expound 
the  system  of  St.  Paul's  School;  there  is 
nothing  specific  about  it;  least  of  all  is  there 
anything  markedly  English.  Naturally,  the 
modern  scientific  spirit,  which  has  laid  its 
hand  on  every  human  question,  has  modified 
the  original  scheme.  We  are  no  longer  under 
the  spell  of  a  passion  which  led  Dr.  Coit  to 
write  in  lead-pencil  on  the  fly-leaf  of  the  first 
volume  of  the  "  Rural  Record  "  St.  Augustine's 
words,  "'Jube  quod  vis,  meus  Deus,  et  da  quod 
jubes;  '  '  Command  what  Thou  wilt,  my  God, 
and  grant  what  Thou  commandest.'  This  is 
the  whole  system  of  St.  Paul's."  But  the 
quotation  is  interesting  as  showing  the  mo- 
tives that  lay  at  the  base  of  customs  and 
regulations  which  made  St.  Paul's  a  little 
different  from  other  schools.  Without  en- 
larging upon  these  details  we  shall  confine 

[36] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

ourselves  to  pointing  out  Dr.  Coit's  attitude 
towards  a  few  of  the  prominent  questions 
that  confront  educators. 

In  the  matter  of  athletics  he  was  Athenian 
rather  than  Spartan.  A  rigid  subordination 
of  sport  to  study  was  obviously  an  elemen- 
tary principle  with  a  man  who  regarded  the 
body  as  something  to  be  kept  under,  as  some- 
thing which  had  to  be  tolerated  as  a  necessary 
but  temporary  clog  upon  the  soul.  And  yet 
in  practice,  he  was  friendly  to  all  measures 
that  conduced  to  healthy  athleticism  among 
the  boys.  He  had  a  keen  appreciation  of  the 
moral  value  of  sport,  even  though  its  rough- 
ness and  pagan  frankness  were  somewhat  for- 
eign to  his  puritan  reserve.  Personally,  he 
had  no  athletic  gifts  or  tastes;  one  can 
scarcely  imagine  him  in  the  act  of  running, 
or  of  tossing  a  ball;  no  one  had  ever  seen 
him  with  his  coat  off.  A  modern  foot-ball 
game,  with  its  stadium  accessories  of  roar 
and  blood,  would  have  been  placed  by  him 
in  the  category  of  things  appropriate  to 
Dante's  Inferno.  His  presence  on  our  playing- 

[37] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

fields  during  great  contests  was  an  obligation 
of  his  office,  but  his  interest  was  aca- 
demic; no  doubt  he  was  glad  when  the  gong 
sounded  and  no  one  was  killed.  And  yet 
how  kindly  and  courteously  he  welcomed  the 
boys  at  the  Rectory  at  the  traditional  suppers 
after  the  annual  boat-races,  with  tactful 
recognition  of  success,  and  with  considerable 
knowledge  of  individual  prowess.  He  never 
failed  in  such  duties.  Perhaps  nothing  was 
really  irksome  to  him  when  it  came  in  the 
line  of  duty  and  furthered  the  end  he  had  at 
heart.  And  he  was  too  wise  not  to  see  that 
modern  athletic  sports  have  achieved  in  a 
wholesome  and  appealing  way  for  the  masses 
what  the  entire  scheme  of  Christian  ethics  had 
achieved  for  the  elect  only,  namely,  a  grow- 
ing respect  for  the  sanctities  of  the  human 
body.  He  would  have  been  the  last  to  re- 
fuse the  co-operation  of  a  moral  agency  that 
teaches  the  humblest  newsboy  the  connection 
between  temperance  and  the  success  of  his 
hero  of  the  National  League. 

But   he   was   too   jealous   of   the   ultimate 

[38] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

religious  sanctions  of  virtue,  such  as  are  in- 
culcated by  the  Beatitudes,  to  be  willing  to 
shift  from  his  own  shoulders  the  burden  of 
personal  responsibility  for  the  lives  of  his 
own  boys.  Anything  approaching  the  current 
fad  of  teaching  sex-hygiene  to  the  young  in 
classes  wholesale  was  absolutely  foreign  to  his 
conception  of  the  philosophy  of  education. 
He  would  not  have  scoffed  at  mere  pruden- 
tial chastity,  but  he  was  convinced  that  it 
presented  no  sure  defence  against  the  argu- 
ments of  the  flesh,  if  the  religious  motive  was 
absent.  He  had  a  very  keen  scent  for  the 
presence  of  what  was  low  and  vile  in  the 
mind  of  a  boy,  and  he  never  shrank  from 
the  delicate  duty  of  personal  guidance  and  in- 
struction. In  fact,  his  own  aggressive  purity 
was  contagious.  But,  both  in  his  sermons 
and  in  his  wonderful  Thursday  night  talks,  his 
instinct  led  him,  if  he  had  occasion  to  touch 
upon  this  delicate  subject,  to  dwell  rather 
upon  the  beauty  and  joy  of  the  clean  life, 
and  thus  to  aim  at  accomplishing  by  indirec- 
tion what  other  educators  of  less  imagination 

[39] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

try  to  accomplish  by  the  aid  of  a  physician. 
He  knew  that  a  sense  of  right  and  wrong  is 
implanted  in  every  human  being,  that  the 
youngest  child  is  under  no  real  illusions 
about  fundamentals;  and  he  was  willing  to 
risk  a  few  failures,  under  the  generous  aspira- 
tion that  the  great  majority  might  enjoy  a 
comparatively  innocent  adolescence  and  be 
spared  the  sorrowful  sense  that  the  whole 
world  is  hopelessly  prone  to  sin.  He  felt 
that  the  Christian  religion,  backed  by  home 
influences  and  the  manly  compulsions  of 
physical  sports,  is  all  that  is  necessary  for 
the  proper  training  of  the  young.  And  he 
would  not  admit  that  the  change  from  school 
to  college  involved  any  fresh  point  of  view  or 
any  new  rules.  Anywhere  and  everywhere, 
it  was  the  human  soul  that  was  at  stake,  and, 
although  the  boy  should  be  warned  against 
the  peculiar  temptations  of  college  life,  Dr. 
Coit  always  prescribed  to  him,  as  the  only 
unfailing  guarantee  of  winning  out,  the  strict 
observance  of  his  religious  duties,  the  habit 
of  never  intermitting  prayer,  Bible-reading, 
[40] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

and  one  service,  at  least,  in  Church  on  Sun- 
days. Doubtless,  his  advice  in  numberless 
instances  was  not  followed,  but  many  who 
read  this  will  inwardly  confess  that  even  the 
advice  was  bracing.  The  writer  remembers 
the  case  of  an  old  boy,  over  fifty  years  of  age, 
who  asseverated  to  him  that  he  had  never 
failed  to  read  a  few  verses  of  the  Bible  at 
night,  even  under  the  most  unfavorable  cir- 
cumstances, and  once  when  he  was  so  mud- 
dled with  alcohol  that  he  scarcely  knew  what 
he  was  doing;  and  he  did  not  himself  regard 
this  performance  as  hypocrisy,  but  rather  as 
prompted  by  an  intuition  akin  to  that  which 
impels  a  drowning  man  to  grasp  at  anything 
that  offers.  It  is  needless  to  add  that  many 
an  alumnus,  who  conspicuously  failed  to  live 
up  to  these  ideals,  was  deterred  from  visiting 
his  old  school  out  of  sheer  unwillingness  to 
face  the  Doctor's  scrutinizing  eye. 

The  school-historian  of  twenty-five  years 
hence  will  probably  characterize  the  present 
moment  as  a  period  of  transition,  when  St. 
Paul's  was  gradually  passing  from  paternal 

[41] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

to  institutional  government.  He  will  recog- 
nize that  a  sufficient  number  of  the  older 
masters,  "  wedded  to  their  idols, "  remained  in 
their  places  long  enough  to  obstruct  a  too 
rapid  change  of  methods.  He  will  then  pro- 
ceed to  comment  upon  the  eternal  strife 
between  the  conservative  and  the  radical 
temper,  and  the  steady  and  sober  gain  to  civ- 
ilization resulting  from  their  painful  collisions. 
But  he  will  be  complacent  over  the  changed 
conditions,  and  will  fortify  his  contention  by 
remarking  that  under  no  circumstances  can 
Progress  stay  her  hand,  that  the  past  must 
give  place  to  the  present;  and,  if  he  is  dis- 
posed to  illustrate,  he  will  take  the  city  of 
Rome  to  task  for  clinging  to  her  ruins,  alleg- 
ing that  hygiene  demands  the  removal  of 
rubbish.  He  will  aver  that  no  sane  public 
opinion  can  tolerate  the  retention  of  medieval 
fever-ridden  districts  in  order  that  a  few  tour- 
ists may  dream  morbidly  over  rotting  beauty. 
Or,  in  accepting  meekly  the  final  disappear- 
ance of  the  classic  tongues  from  our  school 
curriculum,  he  will  applaud  the  words  of 
[42] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

Emile  Faguet  a  propos  of  the  neglect  of 
the  French  vernacular:  "Vous  n'allez  pas 
interrompre  le  cours  de  la  civilization  pour 
ramener  les  hommes  a  Vttude  de  la  langue 
frangaise."  Finally,  he  will  note  the  survival 
of  a  number  of  forms  and  usages,  some  quite 
stripped  of  meaning,  that  alone  mark  the 
fiery  trail  of  the  first  Rector. 

But  while  we  are  still  of  the  present  mo- 
ment, while  we  are  part  of  the  process  of 
transformation  from  a  one-man  school  to  an 
institution,  and  are  still  partially  under  the 
spell  of  the  past,  let  us  fix  certain  points  of 
school  history. 

The  early  days  of  St.  Paul's  could  scarcely 
be  other  than  paternal  in  administration. 
Dr.  Coit  had  a  free  field;  St.  Paul's  was  all 
aim  and  no  means.  And  for  better  or  worse, 
the  dominating  character  of  Dr.  Coit,  with 
its  prevailing  note  of  conviction  and  im- 
peccability, was  to  have  the  fashioning  of 
it.  This  autocratic  quality  in  the  person- 
ality of  Dr.  Coit,  with  all  that  it  implies,  has 
always  been  a  thorny  question  in  the  minds 

[43] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

of  those  who  otherwise  would  rank  him  among 
the  saints.  It  is  obvious  that  no  analysis,  no 
generous  interpretation,  can  ever  make  the 
exhibitions  of  imperious  will  anything  but 
unlovely  spectacles;  such  exhibitions  may 
even  be  wholesome,  but  they  are  not  strictly 
graces  of  character.  Most  people  are  offended 
by  them.  And  yet  there  are  two  kinds  of 
will,  the  will  of  a  Napoleon  and  the  will  of  a 
St.  Francis,  the  will  of  self  and  of  ambition, 
and  the  will  that  has  its  roots  in  moral  con- 
viction. They  usually  deal  with  different 
questions,  and  there  is  little  doubt  as  to 
which  is  the  stronger.  Dr.  Coit  was  like  a 
wall,  if  a  principle  was  involved;  and  natu- 
rally parents  and  masters,  not  to  mention 
boys,  were  occasionally  wounded,  and  some- 
times alienated.  But  there  was  nothing  stud- 
ied or  conscious  in  the  dominating  manner  of 
Dr.  Coit,  nor  did  it  appear  in  petty  ways  or 
devious  methods.  Consequently  it  was  over- 
looked or  forgiven  for  the  sake  of  the  large 
and  generous  qualities  that  lay  behind.  Had 
his  autocratic  will  extended  to  little  tyrannies 
[44] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

he  never  would  have  held  the  body  of  strong 
men  that  he  gradually  gathered  about  him. 
Moreover,  a  certain  attitude  of  assured  con- 
viction is  one  thing  in  the  conduct  of  the 
unequipped  and  inexperienced,  and  quite 
another  in  that  of  him  who  has  been  ripened 
by  time  and  training;  Dr.  Coit  was  re- 
markably sure  in  his  judgments  and  intui- 
tions. His  decisions  were  warped  neither  by 
vanity  nor  by  ambition  in  the  ordinary  sense, 
and  his  unselfish  disinterestedness  is  suffi- 
ciently attested  by  the  fact  that,  after  forty 
years'  control  of  the  school  finances,  he  had 
never  been  able  to  reconcile  it  with  his  con- 
science to  lay  by  a  dollar  out  of  the  School's 
income.  He  died  without  property  of  any 
sort.  This  will  not  be  regarded  by  the  world 
as  the  mark  of  prudence;  but  it  was  charac- 
teristic of  the  man  absorbed  in  his  mission, 
part  mystic,  part  monk  and  part  stoic.  And 
this  temperamental  indifference  to  worldly 
success  and  to  the  satisfactions  that  most 
men  prize  may  have  unconsciously  fed  a 
sense  of  superiority  over  men  less  eman- 

[45] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

cipated  from  the  body  than^he.  It  is  in- 
evitable that  one  who  had  no  taste  for  the 
conventional  dissipations  of  life,  who  had 
never  been  inside  a  theatre,  who  could  hardly, 
when  dying,  be  induced  to  take  a  spoonful 
of  stimulant,  who  never  seemed  to  require 
the  most  innocent  relaxation  of  body,  and 
whose  daily  life  had  been,  to  the  best  of  our 
knowledge,  conformable  to  these  austere 
standards, —  it  is  inevitable  that  such  a  one 
should  be  conscious  of  a  plane  of  living 
somewhat  higher  than  that  of  the  average 
man.  If  this  is  self-righteousness,  it  is  cer- 
tainly venial.  Dr.  Coit  once  remarked  to 
the  writer  that  no  man  over  twenty-five  was 
justified  in  eating  or  drinking  anything  that 
might  disagree  with  him.  He  also  said  that 
any  Christian  man  ought  to  be  able  to  read 
a  poem  like  "Venus  and  Adonis"  without  an 
emotional  ripple.  The  notable  thing  about 
this  last  remark  is  that  he  should  have 
found  Shakespeare's  famous  poem  a  classic 
instance  of  salaciousness. 

It  is  probable,  therefore,  that  this  habitual 

[46] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

appeal  to  so  lofty  a  standard,  a  standard 
which  he  by  no  means  exacted  of  his  boys, 
gave  him  an  air  of  superiority,  which  perhaps 
only  veiled  the  reserved  and  humble  follower 
of  Jesus  Christ.  And  in  quitting  this  subject, 
it  may  be  added  that  really  valid  and  un- 
sophisticated characters  were  not  very  much 
disturbed  by  his  manner;  perhaps  at  bottom  it 
was  only  "  amour  propre  "  that  suffered.  It  is  an 
open  question  whether  "amour  propre"  is  not 
the  cause  of  most  of  the  quarrels  and  mis- 
understandings that  have  marked  the  world's 
history. 

Dr.  Coit's  chief  weapon  in  dealing  with 
boys  was  persuasion.  Rules  and  penalties 
were  necessary,  but,  if  possible,  were  to  be 
anticipated.  Dr.  Arnold  had  said  that  in 
ruling  a  great  school  the  "first  thing  is 
*  words/  the  second  thing  is  *  words/  and 
the  third  thing  is  *  words/'  Without  doubt, 
back  of  the  "words"  there  was  implied 
punishment,  and,  if  necessary,  expulsion. 

The  historic  Thursday  Evening  Talks, 
sometimes  called  Dr.  Coit's  Lectures,  devel- 

[47] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

oped  gradually  out  of  his  need  of  getting  in 
touch  with  the  boys  on  all  burning  topics 
of  school  life.  He  had  a  singular  power  of 
winning  them  over  to  his  own  point  of 
view,  and,  in  the  process,  he  made  use  of  all 
his  gifts  of  speech,  running  the  gamut  from 
the  most  serious  note  down  to  the  ironical 
and  humorous.  The  merely  facetious  found 
no  place  in  his  rhetoric.  The  writer  never 
heard  him  make  a  pun,  though  he  could 
enjoy  one  even  when  with  mock  gravity  he 
reproved  the  perpetrator.  Of  real  humor  he 
had  full  store,  and  his  sense  of  the  incon- 
gruous saved  him  from  many  a  blunder  that 
dogs  the  fate  of  the  best  of  men.  This  sense 
of  humor,  combined  with  the  taste  which  was 
the  reward  of  his  cultural  studies  in  the 
Humanities,  was  a  sure  bulwark  against  the 
crudities  of  educational  theories.  He  in- 
stinctively shrank  from  a  new  panacea  or 
short-cut;  hard  work  in  his  opinion  could 
alone  make  the  scholar  or  the  saint.  And 
diligent  work  was  a  duty,  not  to  be  coaxed 
by  too  many  rewards.  Prizes  were  few,  and 
[48] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

were,  therefore,  greatly  desiderated.  The 
school  medal,  in  his  day,  was  a  precious 
possession;  and  events  have  proved  that 
few  mistakes  were  made  in  the  bestowal  of 
it.  Perhaps  it  may  be  thought  wise  some 
day  to  abandon  this  prize,  which  causes 
heart-burnings  and  which,  as  virtually  de- 
nominating the  finest  boy  in  VI  Form,  can- 
not logically  be  given  to  any  boy  who  works 
for  it  and  deems  himself  worthy  of  it.  And 
yet  the  long  line  of  worthy  holders  of  the 
medal  would  seem  to  belie  any  such  mis- 
givings, and  it  would  probably  be  a  mistake 
to  interrupt  a  succession  that  connotes  so 
noble  an  ideal. 

The  attitude  of  the  first  Rector  towards 
the  Sixth  Form  was  certainly  not  that  of  a 
Head  Master  of  Eton  or  Rugby.  Perhaps 
it  was  not  a  wise  attitude,  but  he  had  no 
leaning  towards  government  by  Prefects. 
Worthy  and  responsible  members  of  the 
Sixth  Form  he  always  took  into  his  confi- 
dence and  used  as  ancillary  forces  in  the 
school  republic.  But  he  was  suspicious  of 

[49] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

the  immaturity  of  youth  under  twenty,  and 
he  felt  that  his  younger  pupils  were  confided 
to  his  care  with  the  implicit  understanding 
that  they  were  to  be  guided  and  influenced 
by  masters  who  should  be  men  of  proved 
character  and  experience.  Moreover,  we 
fancy  that  he  distrusted  anything  mediate  in 
his  own  influence;  he  desired  to  have  nothing 
between  himself  and  the  boys.  Finally,  he 
was  not  sure  that  the  position  of  prefect  was 
quite  wholesome.  Was  it  not  possible  that, 
although  the  system  saved  labor  for  masters, 
and  promoted  an  exterior  order,  it  was  a 
strain  on  character  and  had  a  tendency  to 
make  prigs?  It  certainly  is  not  altogether 
American.  The  Sixth  Form  in  his  day  never 
had  much  organization,  and,  being  dis- 
tributed in  various  houses,  did  not  bulk  very 
large  in  the  eyes  of  the  rest  of  the  school. 
Unquestionably,  there  is  room  for  a  very 
different  point  of  view  here,  and  we  are 
inclined  to  suspect  that  Dr.  Coit  could  not 
tolerate  any  prominence  that  militated  in 
the  least  against  his  own  supremacy.  "In 
[50] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

statu  pupillari"  and  "In  loco  parentis"  were 
living  phrases  with  him,  and  he  was  not  dis- 
posed to  regard  even  his  oldest  boys  as  any- 
thing but  boys.  And  for  this  reason  he  was 
jealous  of  any  encroachment  of  the  college 
spirit  upon  the  simple  habitudes  of  the  school 
life.  Exchange  of  civilities  and  interscho- 
lastic  sports  were  not  to  be  thought  of. 
Hence  our  wholesome  system  of  home  ath- 
letics, with  the  minimum  of  perfervid  excite- 
ment and  the  maximum  of  real  enjoyment, 
and  one  might  in  fairness  add,  with  the  loss 
of  perfect  attainment  which  such  isolation 
would  entail.  There  was  to  be  no  preferred 
college;  no  great  school  could  properly  be  a 
feeder  for  any  one  institution.  Not  that  he 
had  no  preference  nor  ever  showed  it.  He 
was  in  reality  deeply  prejudiced,  and,  not- 
withstanding his  imposed  prudence,  he  occa- 
sionally allowed  criticisms  to  escape  him 
that  were  resented  in  quarters  that  need  not 
be  named.  As  a  Trustee  of  Trinity  College 
he  would  naturally  have  been  pleased  to  see 
his  boys  enter  that  excellent  home  of  learn- 

[51] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

ing;  but  he  used  no  undue  influence,  realiz- 
ing that  parents  had  the  decision,  and  that 
boys  usually  follow  their  fathers'  footsteps 
in  the  path  of  knowledge. 

Of  the  use  of  influence,  which  is  the  teach- 
er's prerogative  and  business,  Dr.  Coit  was 
extremely  conscientious.  He  knew  that  boys 
are  born  hero-worshippers  and  too  readily 
catch  the  tone  of  their  environment.  With 
their  limitations  in  view  he  treated  them  with 
great  respect.  "Maxima  debetur  puero  rever- 
ential He  felt  the  responsibility  of  the  right 
or  wrong  word  at  the  critical  moment.  And 
so  he  uttered  words  of  encouragement  as 
often  as  those  of  rebuke.  It  was  rather  char- 
acteristic of  him  to  use  both  at  the  same 
time.  Could  not  many  an  alumnus  conjure 
up  in  memory  a  specific  scene  to  illustrate 
this  generalization  —  how,  after  being  sum- 
moned to  the  Doctor's  study,  how,  after 
being  reduced  to  pulp  and  rendered  thor- 
oughly contrite,  he  was  sent  off  by  a  few 
words  of  affectionate  appreciation  in  a  glow 
of  determination  to  do  better? 

[52] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

Indeed,  Dr.  Coit  held  it  for  a  principle 
never  to  let  a  boy,  if  it  could  be  helped,  leave 
his  presence  in  a  rebellious  spirit,  somewhat 
as  Jacob,  wrestling  with  the  Angel,  would  not 
let  go  his  hold  until  the  Angel  had  blessed 
him.  A  recent  writer  in  the  Century  Maga- 
zine has  said  that  "It  is  perhaps  the  final 
test  of  a  gentleman, —  his  attitude  toward 
children."  Without  pressing  too  far  this 
aphorism,  we  may  remark  that  there  is  cer- 
tainly a  "juste  milieu"  between  the  severe 
neglect  or  intolerable  condescension  shown  by 
our  forefathers  towards  the  young  and  the 
affected  air  of  equality  that  prevails  to-day, 
and  that  his  attitude  will  always  mark  the 
manner  of  the  instructed  adult.  A  boy  does 
not  even  desire  to  be  treated  like  an  equal, 
but  he  does  covet  serious  attention,  and,  in 
most  cases,  responds  quickly  to  sympathetic 
encouragement.  He  likes  to  feel  that  his 
efforts  are  noticed.  Dr.  Coit  never  seemed 
to  lose  an  opportunity  of  commending  dis- 
creetly a  boy  who  was  showing  progress  in 
work  or  conduct,  and  more  than  frequently 

[53] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

marked  his  approbation,  and  sometimes  his 
disapprobation,  by  the  gift  of  some  wisely 
selected  book.  This  was  one  of  his  uncon- 
sciously happy  devices,  and  we  doubt  not 
that  there  are  scores  of  these  books  at  the 
present  moment  resting  on  the  shelves  of 
their  grateful  possessors.  If  present-day 
school-masters  are  not  aware  of  the  stimulus 
exerted  by  such  practical  expressions  of  ap- 
proval and  regard,  they  had  better  begin  the 
experience.  The  ''largesse99  is,  indeed,  a  legiti- 
mate instrument  in  education,  a  blessing  to 
him  that  gives  as  well  as  to  him  that  takes. 
To  the  boy  it  seems  quite  natural  that  a  per- 
son who  has  such  plenary  powers  in  all  vital 
matters  should  be  also  the  dispenser  of  good 
things;  and  in  his  generous  imputation  of  all 
virtues  to  his  master,  he  finds  it  easy  to  im- 
pute riches  to  him  also. 

And  this  temperamental  interest  on  the 
part  of  Dr.  Coit  in  the  welfare  of  the  boys 
was  scarcely  more  noticeable  than  his  attach- 
ment to  the  masters.  They  were  his  friends, 
and  once  landed  at  St.  Paul's  School,  and 

[54] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

squarely  identified  with  it,  unless  they  had 
failed  to  make  good,  there  was  no  thought  of 
a  separation;  they  were  part  of  the  work. 
It  is  true  that  he  held  them  up  to  a  high 
standard,  but  there  was  no  nagging,  and  they 
had  full  chance  to  succeed  or  fail.  The 
school-master's  lot  is  not  always  a  happy  one, 
and  his  art  is  not  always  easy  to  learn. 
Sometimes  in  a  certain  bitterness  of  soul, 
when  smarting  from  the  rebuffs  with  which 
vulgar  and  robust  natures,  whether  in  boys 
or  men,  repay  gentle  handling,  he  is  tempted 
to  think  that  one  cannot  be  at  once  a  suc- 
cessful school-master  and  a  gentleman.  But, 
fortunately,  such  moods  are  evanescent,  and 
to  the  truly  discerning  school-master  there 
can  be  no  manner  of  doubt  as  to  the  value 
of  breeding  as  an  asset  in  the  equipment  of 
the  perfect  educator.  Dr.  Coit  may  be  said 
to  have  settled  the  question. 

"Nature  never  rhymes  her  children,"  and 
we  are  not  likely  to  duplicate  him  in  this 
country  nor  an  Arnold  in  England;  such  men 
are  the  product  of  their  epochs  and  meet 

[55] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

certain  needs.  A  weak  copyist  would  be 
fatal.  Dr.  Coit  would  be  a  dangerous  man 
to  imitate.  What  was  real  would  be  shoddy 
in  a  less  genuine  person;  his  gentleness  would 
be  effeminacy;  his  dignity,  pomposity;  his 
piety,  hypocrisy;  his  autocracy,  an  effective 
working  policy;  his  spiritual  elevation,  a  pre- 
tence; his  moral  domination,  a  tyranny;  his 
graciousness,  patronizing  condescension;  his 
delicate  probing  of  the  conscience,  an  abuse 
of  the  confessional;  his  playful  irony,  a  calcu- 
lated weapon.  If  the  first  Rector  could  be 
translated  in  such  terms,  the  work  wrought 
by  him  would  have  long  since  proved  a 
Frankenstein,  taking  vengeance  on  his  cre- 
ator and  then  disappearing  like  all  unrealities. 

And  how  have  his  boys  fared  in  the  busi- 
ness of  life?  This  is  a  question  that  can- 
not be  answered  with  precision,  but  a  glance 
at  the  quality  of  the  men  that  find  them- 
selves united  at  our  large  Alumni  gatherings 
should  reassure  the  sceptics.  All  professions 
and  callings  are  represented,  and  the  failures 
are  conspicuously  few.  Sixty  clergymen  and 

[56] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

seven  bishops  testify  to  the  subtle  though 
never  compelling  influence  of  the  religious 
school  of  the  first  forty  years.  A  notable 
body  of  lawyers,  physicians,  novelists,  his- 
torians, and  publicists,  illustrate  the  intel- 
lectual impulse.  Hosts  of  others  bear  in 
their  sober  lives  the  stamp  of  their  training 
under  Dr.  Coit.  As  far  as  we  are  aware, 
none  of  his  boys  have  been  in  prison  or  in 
an  asylum;  this  may  sound  like  a  strange 
statement,  but  it  has  a  meaning  in  these 
days  of  lawlessness  and  neurasthenia.  He 
did  not  leave  a  perfectly  organized  institu- 
tion, but  he  left  it  free  from  debt,  and  with 
a  foundation,  the  stronger  for  being  purely 
moral,  on  which  his  successors  could  build 
as  time  and  circumstance  should  demand. 
Froude  says,  on  the  last  page  of  his  History 
of  England:  "The  worst  legacy  which  princes 
or  statesmen  could  bequeath  to  their  country 
would  be  the  resolution  of  all  its  perplexities, 
the  establishment  once  and  forever  of  a  fin- 
ished system,  which  would  neither  require  nor 
tolerate  improvement." 

[57] 


Ill 

TEACHER 

DR.  ARNOLD,  in  a  letter  to  an  old  boy, 
has  said:  "I  call  by  the  name  of  wis- 
dom, knowledge  rich  and  varied,  digested  and 
combined,  and  pervaded  through  and  through 
by  the  light  of  the  spirit  of  God."  Nothing 
better  could  describe  Dr.  Coit's  ideal.  It  is 
the  wisdom  of  the  ages  that  he  revered,  not 
the  facts  from  which  it  is  garnered  nor  any 
particular  method  of  acquisition.  He  had  no 
especial  predilection  for  a  book  as  such;  no 
particular  edition,  no  choice  binding  aroused 
any  great  enthusiasm.  Life  was  too  short 
and  too  serious  for  such  irrelevancies.  Hall 
Harrison  handled  a  book  as  a  young  father 
handles  his  first  baby;  a  book  was  a  book 
and  therefore  precious.  The  only  book  that 
Dr.  Coit  treated  with  idolatry  was  the  Bible; 
it  had  its  place  apart,  and  no  other  book  was 
suffered  to  rest  on  top  of  it.  Many  bibles 
[58] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

there  were  and  much  theology  in  his  per- 
sonal library,  which  was  large  and  constantly 
augmented  regardless  of  expense,  and  the 
secular  side  was  not  neglected.  Doubtless 
the  range  in  literature  was  conditioned  some- 
what by  the  demands  of  his  profession,  for 
he  made  great  use  of  his  reading,  in  class 
and  out  of  it.  Those  of  us  who  had  the 
privilege  of  reading  the  Greek  and  Latin 
classics  under  him  owe  him  more  than  we 
are  wont  to  admit  for  the  first  dawn  of  real 
interest  in  general  literature.  The  phrase, 
"inspiring  teacher/'  has  become  a  familiar 
common-place,  but  it  can  very  properly  be 
applied  to  Dr.  Coit.  Not  satisfied  with 
securing  an  exact  knowledge  of  text,  gram- 
mar and  allusions,  he  freshened  the  time- 
worn  subject  matter  by  constant  reference 
and  illustration  both  in  the  classic  tongues 
and  in  the  vernacular.  There  are  not  many 
of  the  Alumni  who  can  revert  to  the  meridian 
charm  of  the  first  Rector's  teaching  and  cor- 
roborate the  writer's  impressions;  yet  there 
are  some  who  may  recall,  as  if  it  were  their 

[59] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

first  initiation  into  the  magic  of  words,  the 
quotations  that  follow.  The  writer,  in  his 
Upper  Sixth  Form  year,  read  the  Eclogues, 
Georgics  and  every  word  of  Horace  with  Dr. 
Coit.  There  were  but  two  in  the  class,  and, 
alas!  one,  Henry  Skelton  Carter,  is  now  gone. 
Under  such  informal  conditions,  the  teacher 
had  a  free  hand.  How  well  the  writer  re- 
members the  various  tomes  —  at  that  date 
regarded  with  awe  —  that  were  brought  down 
from  their  shelves  in  the  Doctor's  Study,  and 
pillaged  of  their  beauties  for  our  inspiration. 
The  music  of  these  lines,  even  after  forty 
years,  still  echoes  in  the  mind. 
From  Shelley : 

"Arethusa  arose 
From  her  couch  of  snows 
In  the  Acroceraunian  mountains; 
From  cloud  and  from  crag 
With  many  a  jag, 
Shepherding  her  bright  fountains." 

From  Pope: 

"Yet  e'en  in  death  Eurydice  he  sung, 
Eurydice  still  trembled  on  his  tongue; 
Eurydice  the  woods, 
Eurydice  the  floods, 
Eurydice  the  rocks  and  hollow  mountains  rung." 

[60] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

From  Milton: 

"Alas!  what  boots  it  with  incessant  care 
To  tend  the  homely  slighted  shepherd's  trade, 
And  strictly  meditate  the  thankless  Muse? 
Were  it  not  better  done  as  others  use, 
To  sport  with  Amaryllis  in  the  shade 
Or  with  the  tangles  of  Neaera's  hair?  " 

Milton  was  after  his  own  heart,  though  he 
probably  placed  Dante  higher  as  a  poet.  His 
theological  bias  and  his  breadth  of  reading 
made  him  tolerant  of  the  concrete  mysteries 
of  Dante,  but  his  Puritan  reserve  found  more 
congenial  food  in  the  restrained  tropes  of  Milton. 
He  would  read  aloud  with  manifest  joy  such 
passages  as  the  following,  and  with  full  classic 
feeling  for  the  sorcery  of  the  proper  names. 

"As  when  far  off  at  sea  a  fleet  descried 
Hangs  in  the  clouds,  by  equinoctial  winds 
Close  sailing  from  Bengala,  or  the  iles 
Of  Ternate  and  Tidore,  whence  merchants  bring 
Then-  spicy  drugs;  they  on  the  trading  flood 
Through  the  wide  Ethiopian  to  the  Cape 
Ply  stemming  nightly  toward  the  pole:  so  seemed 
Far  off  the  flying  Fiend." 

or  from  Paradise  Regained: 

"See  there  the  olive  grove  of  Academe, 
Plato's  retirement,  where  the  Attic  bird 
Trills  her  thick- warbl'd  notes  the  summer  long; 

[61] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

There  flowery  hill  Hymettus,  with  the  sound 
Of  bees'  industrious  murmur,  oft  invites 
To  studious  musing;  there  Ilissus  rolls 
His  whispering  stream." 

From  Wordsworth: 

"  In  that  fair  clime,  the  lonely  herdsman,  stretched 
On  the  soft  grass  through  hah*  a  summer's  day, 
With  music  lulled  his  indolent  repose: 
And,  in  some  fit  of  weariness,  if  he, 
When  his  own  breast  was  silent,  chanced  to  hear 
A  distant  strain,  far  sweeter  than  the  sounds 
Which  his  poor  skill  could  make,  his  fancy  fetched, 
Even  from  the  blazing  chariot  of  the  sun, 
A  beardless  Youth,  who  touched  a  golden  lute, 
And  filled  the  illumined  groves  with  ravishment. 
The  nightly  hunter,  lif ting  a  bright  eye 
Up  towards  the  crescent  moon,  with  grateful  heart 
Called  on  the  lovely  wanderer  who  bestowed 
That  timely  light,  to  share  his  joyous  sport: 

"And  hence  a  beaming  Goddess  with  her  Nymphs 
Across  the  lawn  and  through  the  darksome  grove, 
Not  unaccompanied  with  tuneful  notes 
By  echo  multiplied  from  rock  or  cave, 
Swept  in  the  storm  of  chase." 

Or  else  some  fragments  that  linger  in  the 
memory,  and  are  yet  too  trifling  to  claim  an 
author: 

"  Call  me  Daph  ^e,  call  me  Doris, 
Call  me  Lalage  or  Chloris, 
Only,  only  call  me  thine." 

"And  still 't  is  Jupiter  who  brings  whate'er  is  great, 
And  Venus  who  brings  every  thing  that's  fair." 

[62] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

The  atmosphere  of  these  quotations  is  not 
scientific,  but  it  had  its  value,  and  bred 
scholars.  Yet,  it  must  not  be  inferred  that 
such  was  the  main  staple  of  Dr.  Coit's 
method  in  teaching  the  classics.  He  was 
most  exacting  in  regard  to  the  mastery  of 
every  linguistic  detail  in  the  book,  whether 
prose  or  verse,  that  was  being  studied. 
Every  day's  lesson  was  to  be  learned,  and 
no  boy  ventured  to  come  to  his  class  unpre- 
pared, or  half-prepared.  Dr.  Coit  insisted 
on  hard  work  as  the  only  basis  of  sound 
learning;  the  responsibility  rested  on  the 
boy,  and  good  teaching  could  do  little  more 
than  guide  and  inspire.  He  had  no  leaning 
toward  the  analytic  methods  which  are  much 
in  vogue  to-day,  and  preferred  to  store  boys' 
minds  with  many  fine  passages  in  literature 
rather  than  to  dissect  a  few  of  them,  realiz- 
ing that  memory  is  the  precious  possession 
of  youth  and  that  excessive  analysis  is  a 
bore.  He  knew  that  a  boy  craves  certitude, 
and  that  his  attention  flags  if  balanced 
alternatives  are  presented  to  him  in  place  of 

[63] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

categorical  statements.  Hence  he  undoubt- 
edly made  some  unqualified  assertions  in 
literary  matters  which  our  later  reading  has 
not  quite  confirmed,  but  for  which  we  are 
none  the  worse  off.  He  did  not  wish  his 
opinions  challenged,  and  we  remember  very 
vividly  the  lofty  way  in  which  he  would 
wave  off  any  boy  who  ventured  to  cite  a 
dictionary  as  counter-authority  to  his  own 
translation  or  pronunciation.  He  was  by  no 
means  impeccable  in  his  English;  this  is  no 
unusual  thing  with  fine  scholars,  and  comes 
often  from  early  home  associations.  No  one 
could  explain  his  habitual  use  of  the  collo- 
quialism, "Was  you  there?",  but  no  one 
cared  to  correct  him.  Possibly  he  was  aware 
that  this  was  fair  usage  in  the  later  Eigh- 
teenth Century,  but  he  would  not  have 
worried  over  the  necessity  or  propriety  of 
any  defence;  his  speech  no  more  than  his 
act  was  a  debatable  question.  It  may  be 
said  that  his  language  in  general  was  slightly 
Euphuistic,  though  the  habit  was  uncon- 
scious and  temperamental.  When  he  broke 
[64] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

his  leg,  it  was  not  pain  but  "anguish"  that 
he  suffered.  Things  were  "reassuring,"  not 
"encouraging";  other  things  were  "all  very 
poor,"  when  the  ordinary  person  would  have 
found  more  expressive  language.  "Servants" 
were  "domestics."  Such  a  tendency  in  the 
use  of  speech  as  we  are  noting  will  be  attrib- 
uted by  some  people  to  the  inevitable  emer- 
gence of  the  pedagogic  manner,  to  the 
difficulty  of  descending  from  the  pedestal 
where  circumstances  placed  him.  However, 
it  did  not  appear  at  all  in  any  public  utter- 
ances, such  as  his  sermons,  in  the  prepara- 
tion of  which,  it  may  be  added,  he  had  a 
little  of  the  Port  Royal  notion  that  excessive 
conscious  elaboration  was  incompatible  with 
the  collaboration  of  God. 

His  vocabulary  was  rich,  and  the  apt  word 
rarely  failed  him.  This  came  naturally  to  one 
who  dwelt  habitually  in  the  company  of  the 
great  writers  of  the  past,  and  to  whom 
translation  was  a  daily  habitude.  The  Eng- 
lish Bible,  his  Greek  Testament,  and  the 
classic  poets,  —  these  were  his  preferred 

[65] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

friends.  And  it  was  these  that  he  held  up 
to  his  boys  as  models.  Notable  passages 
were  to  be  committed  to  memory,  which 
would  serve,  not  only  as  models,  like  the 
masterpieces  of  the  fine  arts  and  industrial 
arts,  for  authority  and  imitation,  but  still 
more  as  fountains  of  emotional  power.  He 
laid  great  stress  in  general  on  the  utility  of 
memorizing  famous  words;  they  were  the 
abiding  possession  of  a  life-time.  And  then 
he  was  a  fine  translator,  giving  to  the  English 
rendering  of  Homer  and  Virgil  a  swing,  with 
a  diction  at  once  literal  and  equivalent,  that 
readily  invited  the  ambitious  to  imitation; 
we  used  to  think  the  phrases  fell  from  his 
lips  into  iambic  pentameters  fit  for  the 
printer.  The  classics  were  so  much  a  part 
of  his  intellectual  baggage,  and  were  so  real 
to  him,  that  he  made  us  share  in  his  enthu- 
siasm. And  yet  the  reality  was  that  of  the 
idealist.  He  could  be  pleased  that  Third 
Formers  under  the  supervision  of  John  T. 
Wheeler  should  set  themselves  to  construct- 
ing a  model  of  Caesar's  bridge,  with  minute 
[66] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

attention  to  the  Latin  text,  but  the  veritable 
structure  had  no  meaning  for  him  as  a 
mechanical  product  of  the  first  century  be- 
fore Christ;  it  was  interesting  because  asso- 
ciated with  the  name  of  the  celebrated 
Roman.  As  for  making  the  bridge  himself, 
it  is  doubtful  whether  he  could  have  pru- 
dently essayed  to  drive  a  nail.  Then,  again, 
he  would  gravely  accept  such  a  statement  as 
that  Hannibal  used  vinegar  to  melt  the  rocks 
lying  in  his  way  over  the  passes  of  the  Alps; 
for  the  word,  was  it  not  "acetum,"  and  was 
not  "acetum"  a  Latin  word,  and^was  not  the 
assertion  found  in  Livy?  That  was  enough 
to  quiet  any  latent  scepticism. 

Indeed,  his  entire  knowledge  of  the  past 
was  deeply  colored  by  his  imagination.  His 
acquaintance  with  the  city  of  Rome  was  inti- 
mate and  accurate,  but  it  was  the  Rome  of 
Long's  Classical  Atlas.  In  1868,  he  had  an 
opportunity  of  realizing  his  dreams,  and  veri- 
fying his  impressions,  but  he  spent  only  ten 
days  in  the  imperial  city,  and,  as  far  as  one 
can  remember,  he  never  had  much  to  say 

[67] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

about  the  experience.  Probably,  he  was  dis- 
appointed; it  was  not  what  it  was  reputed  to 
be.  Certainly,  he  would  have  been  shy  of 
the  Papacy,  and  Medievalism  uncovered  would 
have  been  sordid  enough.  And  as  to  the 
Rome  of  the  Caesars  and  the  Roman  poets, 
the  pages  of  whose  works  he  had  so  lovingly 
fingered,  could  he  have  met  Horace  on  the 
Via  Sacra,  we  are  sure  that  he  would  have 
snubbed  him  as  a  "soulless  Epicurean." 

So  also  with  the  Holy  Land,  which  perhaps 
fortunately  he  did  not  visit.  He  was  never 
tired  of  expatiating  on  the  peaceful  reaches 
of  the  hills  of  Galilee,  on  the  beauty  of  the 
lake  of  Gennesaret,  on  Bethlehem  and  on 
Olivet;  but  these  places  were  the  magic 
names  of  his  New  Testament.  The  barren 
wastes  of  Judaea  and  the  dirty  oriental 
towns  might  have  disquieted  [him  unspeak- 
ably. He  would  have  harked  back  to  his 
Bible  and  have  been  pained  at  the  difficulty 
of  articulating  his  visions  with  the  dry 
realities. 

As   might   be   expected,   Dr.    Coit   was   no 

[68] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

more  fond  of  specific  methods  in  his  teaching 
than  in  his  administration;  in  his  view,  the 
way  to  master  a  subject  was  to  master  it. 
If  the  subject  were  Latin,  the  grammar  was 
to  be  drilled  into  the  boy  with  store  of  rules 
committed  to  memory,  and  then  the  approved 
writers  were  to  be  read  in  large  volume  and 
in  no  choppy  manner.  Examinations  were 
useful,  and  considerable  emphasis  was  laid  on 
the  oral  as  well  as  the  written.  He  appre- 
ciated the  moral  value  of  an  exercise  that 
trained  a  boy  to  stand  up  and  give  "a  reason 
for  the  faith  that  is  in  him  with  meekness 
and  fear."  Marks  also  were  necessary,  but 
they  did  not  necessarily  indicate  a  boy's  com- 
plete achievement.  The  doctrine  of  the  fi- 
nality of  percentages  did  not  impress  him 
greatly;  nor  was  he  eager  to  make  such 
statistics  the  measure  of  a  master's  success. 
In  his  day  a  master  might  be  successful  with- 
out even  knowing  it.  Much  work  and  read- 
ing was  done  outside  the  curriculum,  and 
enthusiasts  were  known  to  steal  from  the 
jealous  domain  of  sleep  a  few  precious  hours 

[69] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

and    in    company    with    the    equally    zealous 
master,  to 

"let  their  lamps,  at  midnight  hour, 
Be  seen  in  some  high  lonely  tower." 

The  Upper  School  of  the  present  day  is  not 
often  the  scene  of  any  scandals  of  this  kind, 
for  the  esteemed  principles  of  hygienics  and 
athletics  equally  forbid  such  a  strain  on 
efficiency.  But  thirty  years  ago,  less  atten- 
tion was  paid  to  the  body,  and  a  boy  might 
spend  his  spare  time  in  the  Library  without 
having  his  temperature  taken;  he  might  even 
have  a  literary  hobby  without  being  a 
"freak";  perhaps  know  his  daily  lesson 
without  being  regarded  as  a  "shark."  A 
little  unclassified  information  was  not  thought 
harmful.  On  the  contrary,  it  was  esteemed 
an  asset.  Voltaire  has  a  pregnant  phrase: 
"Le  superflu9  chose  tres  necessaire."  May  we 
not,  in  the  last  analysis,  regard  the  fine  flavor 
of  Dr.  Coit's  training  and  influence  as  the  bit 
of  superfluity  which  has  created  a  type  of 
its  own,  and  which,  in  so  doing,  has  added  a 
valuable  note  to  the  educational  processes 
[70] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

that  turn  out  our  happy  and  wholesome  body 
of  American  youth? 

St.  Paul's  School,  at  no  period  of  its  his- 
tory, could  measure  up,  perhaps,  to  Carlyle's 
description  of  Rugby  in  Arnold's  time  as  the 
"Temple  of  industrious  peace."  But  indus- 
try was,  certainly,  one  of  the  marks  of  the 
place  during  its  early  decades,  and  Dr.  Coit's 
boys,  even  if  all  were  not  scholars,  had  a 
serious  attitude  towards  culture.  Judged  by 
pragmatic  standards,  his  dream  of  "pouring 
wisdom  into  the  minds  of  boys  who  are  in- 
capable of  receiving  it"  has  not  wholly  failed. 
After  fifty  years,  and  especially  among  his 
pupils  of  fifty  years  of  age  and  over,  the  mark 
of  the  old-fashioned  scholarship  is  notably 
conspicuous.  It  would  be  glory  enough  to 
have  set  in  motion  half-a-dozen  men  of  the 
calibre  of  Marion  Crawford,  Owen  Wister 
and  William  Roscoe  Thayer,  the  brilliant 
author  of  "Cavour";  but  these  names  do 
not  exhaust  the  list.  Nor  would  any  list, 
however  inclusive,  take  account  of  the  still 
larger  number  of  Alumni  who,  whether  in 

[71] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

business  or  in  the  professions,  not  a  few 
being  teachers,  owe  their  love  of  things  intel- 
lectual and  spiritual  to  fruitful  days  spent  at 
the  cloistered  school  among  the  hills  of  New 
Hampshire. 

Perhaps  this  would  be  the  proper  place  in 
an  appreciation  of  Pauline  contributions  to 
education  to  extend  a  little  the  range  of 
credit  and  to  associate  four  or  five  other 
names  with  that  of  the  subject  of  this  study. 
For,  although  it  is  just  to  credit  Dr.  Coit 
with  the  major  streams  of  influence,  even  in 
intellectual  matters,  it  would  not  be  true  to 
say  that  he  had  a  monopoly  of  the  teaching 
function.  It  has  always  seemed  to  the 
writer  that  the  arrival,  in  1865,  as  masters 
at  the  school,  of  Joseph  Rowland  Coit  and 
Hall  Harrison,  marked  an  epoch.  They 
brought  a  breadth  of  culture  and  a  training 
somewhat  different  from  that  which  ob- 
tained at  the  time,  and  their  presence  was 
at  once  felt.  Mathematics  and  Letters  — 
for  it  was  in  general  literature  rather  than 
in  Greek  that  Mr.  Harrison  made  his  contri- 

[72] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

bution  —  immediately  received  an  impulse. 
Dr.  Joseph  Coit  was  a  rare  teacher  of  mathe- 
matics, of  great  competence  and  of  ample 
knowledge.  Two  years  in  the  laboratories 
of  Paris  had  qualified  him  in  chemistry  and 
physics  also,  though  there  was  little  room  at 
the  St.  Paul's  of  1865  for  expansion  in  the 
direction  of  the  physical  sciences.  But  it 
stood  for  something  to  have  among  the  mas- 
ters a  man  who  was  abreast  of  the  rising 
questions  of  the  day  in  the  scientific  world, 
and  the  boys  appreciated  the  fact  then  as, 
if  alive,  they  appreciate  it  to-day.  This  is 
not  the  place  to  dwell  at  length  upon  the 
role  that  Dr.  Joseph  Coit  played  in  thie  his- 
tory of  St.  Paul's  School  during  his  long 
service;  suffice  it  to  say  that  in  very  many 
ways  he  was  the  peer  of  the  first  Rector, 
but  lacked  perhaps  the  touch  of  genius  which 
makes  a  man  great,  and  without  which  no  one 
ever  is  great. 

Here,  also,  we  should  record  the  long  and 
devoted  service  of  Dr.  J.  Milnor  Coit,  the 
younger  brother  of  the  first  two  rectors.  A 

[73] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

layman  and  man  of  business,  he  was  drawn 
rather  accidentally,  like  many  others,  into 
the  activities  of  St.  Paul's  and  for  thirty 
years  occupied  a  very  prominent  place  in 
her  councils.  Though  he  will  be  remembered 
chiefly  for  his  devotion  to  the  Infirmary  and 
for  his  unfailing  kindness  to  the  sick  and  con- 
valescent, yet  his  contribution  to  the  ex- 
panding interests  of  the  school  was  notable 
and  varied.  The  Scientific  side  of  our  cur- 
riculum was  greatly  developed  by  his  zeal, 
and  the  present  laboratory  with  its  admirable 
equipment  is  largely  his  work.  In  general, 
his  great  energy,  freely  expended  in  every 
emergency,  was  always  an  element  of  strength 
to  the  place,  and  as  Vice-Rector  and  Acting 
Rector  at  a  critical  period  in  the  history  of 
St.  Paul's,  he  measured  up  to  his  task  in  a 
manner  that  will  not  be  forgotten. 

Mr.  Augustus  Muhlenberg  Swift  has  al- 
ready been  mentioned  as  one  of  the  early 
masters  who  made  a  distinct  contribution  to 
the  more  imaginative  and  esthetic  side  of  the 
St.  Paul's  tradition.  And,  to  include  one  fur- 

[74] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

ther  name,  as  representing  a  still  existing 
influence,  we  are  sure  we  have  the  full  appro- 
bation of  the  Alumni,  when  we  say  that  the 
school  owes  a  debt  to  Mr.  Charles  Sigourney 
Knox,  who  during  forty-two  years  has  stood 
for  the  highest  standard  of  attainment,  and 
the  pressure  of  whose  exact  scholarship  has 
been  bracing  to  all  who  have  come  into 
relations  with  him.  But  we  must  resist  the 
temptation  to  wander  from  our  subject  and 
enlarge  upon  several  other  men  who  have 
been  the  spiritual  benefactors  of  St.  Paul's. 

It  is  a  happy  thing  when  the  mature  judg- 
ment of  later  years  confirms  the  generous 
enthusiasms  of  youth.  A  man  is  often  for- 
tunate if  he  can  wholly  endorse  his  pro- 
nouncements of  the  preceding  lustrum.  But 
in  the  case  of  Dr.  Coit  the  years  have  brought 
no  serious  disillusion,  and  the  writer  not  only 
has  no  inclination  to  modify  his  warm  eulo- 
gies pronounced  at  the  time  of  Dr.  Coit's 
death,  but  in  general  has  no  apologies  to 
make  for  still  being  only  a  slightly  chastened 
"laudator  temporis  acti."  The  good  old  times 

[75] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

still  seem  good.  Doubtless,  there  is,  in  his 
mental  picture,  a  trace  of  the  glamour  that 
time  is  fond  of  lending  to  everything  in  the 
past.  Perhaps,  too,  although  the  central 
figure  remains  about  the  same,  the  setting 
has  changed  a  little.  A  careful  study  of  the 
catalogues  of  early  days  does  not  quite  con- 
firm his  impressions  as  to  the  quality  of  the 
boy  found  at  the  school  in  those  days.  The 
material  can  hardly  be  called  better  than 
that  of  to-day;  there  was  much  that  was 
commonplace.  On  the  whole,  the  general 
level  both  of  intelligence  and  character  is 
probably  higher  at  the  present  time.  The 
cause  is  not  altogether  easy  to  state,  but  the 
increase  in  wealth  and  the  consequent  free- 
dom from  the  grinding  cares  of  life  has  un- 
doubtedly bred  a  race  somewhat  gentler  and 
more  polished,  in  a  superficial  sense,  than 
that  which  existed  in  the  times  of  the  Civil 
War.  Fathers  have  more  time  to  give  to 
their  boys,  and  the  intimacy  thus  engendered 
would  seem  to  be  wholly  good.  Finally,  the 
reactions  of  school  and  college  life  cannot 
[76] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

but  tend  to  the  uplift  of  the  general  intelli- 
gence. Before  the  war  a  college  education 
was  by  no  means  the  accepted  thing  that  it 
is  now;  fine  boarding-schools  were  scarcely 
to  be  found,  and  the  poor  ones  were  a  men- 
ace. Now,  good  secondary  schools  are  nu- 
merous, and  they  seem  to  challenge  one 
another  in  generous  rivalry  for  the  best 
things  in  mind,  manners  and  morals. 

What  changes  are  in  store  for  St.  Paul's 
School  in  the  matter  of  curriculum  cannot  be 
foreseen.  She  can  hardly  fail  to  share  meas- 
urably in  the  movement  that  would  substi- 
tute the  so-called  practical  studies  for  the 
Humanities.  Dr.  Coit,  at  the  time  of  his 
death,  twenty  years  ago,  would  not  even 
listen  to  propositions  involving  any  assault 
upon  the  sovereignty  of  the  classic  tongues. 
His  historic  and  religious  instincts,  as  well  as 
his  sense  of  mental  values,  impelled  him  to 
subscribe  with  enthusiasm  to  the  doctrine 
contained  in  these  prophetic  words  of  warn- 
ing from  Thomas  Arnold:  " Expel  Greek  and 
Latin  from  your  schools  and  you  confine  the 

[77] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

views  of  the  existing  generation  to  them- 
selves and  their  immediate  predecessors;  you 
will  cut  off  so  many  centuries  of  the  world's 
experience,  and  place  us  in  the  same  state  as 
if  the  human  race  had  first  come  into  exist- 
ence in  the  year  1500."  But,  although  such 
were  Dr.  Coit's  convictions  and  aspirations, 
he  was  too  wise  to  attempt  to  fasten  them  as 
a  binding  creed  upon  the  future  of  the  school; 
he  was  only  concerned  to  do  the  work  in 
hand  as  he  understood  it.  The  working  out 
of  his  plans,  educational,  as  well  as  religious, 
he  left  with  fanatical  faith  in  the  hands  of 
God.  As  he  said  passionately  at  the  close 
of  one  of  his  chapel  sermons:  "Shall  we  give 
up  the  ideal  we  have  had  before  us,  or  lower 
and  shape  it  to  suit  a  self-willed,  faithless 
and  superficial  age?  Ah,  no,  never,  by  the 
help  of  God,  never!  This  place  belongs  to 
our  Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ.  He 
is  and  shall  be  its  true  Light  and 
King."  With  its  religious  side  safeguarded, 
he  concerned  himself  very  little  about 
the  destiny  of  minor  developments  of  the 
[78] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

school   over  which    no    control    on    his   part 
was  possible. 

The  mould  in  which  St.  Paul's  was  cast 
is  of  no  benumbing  rigidity;  and  expansion, 
when  necessary  and  wise,  will  meet  no  fatu- 
ous obstacles;  she  has  never  been  out  of 
touch  with  the  realities.  And  no  one  need 
ever  cite  as  applying  to  her  the  dictum  of 
one  of  her  most  gifted  sons:  "The  conflict 
between  dead  forms  and  living  needs  is  the 
tragedy  of  Institutions." 


[79] 


IV 
PASTOR 

"How  very  hard  it  is  to  be 
A  Christian!  Hard  for  you  and  me." 

—  BROWNING 

IT  is  a  hard  thing  to  be  a  Christian.  This 
very  trite  observation  has  been  labored 
in  many  tongues  and  under  manifold  meta- 
phors for  two  thousand  years,  and  at  the 
present  time  there  is  apparently  no  ground 
for  softening  the  statement.  It  is  a  hard 
thing  for  the  individual,  and  doubly  hard 
for  an  aggregation  of  individuals.1  Deeply 

1  The  following  passage,  touching  upon  the  religious  implica- 
tions of  the  war,  need  not  be  regarded  as  foreign  to  the  subject  of 
this  study.  The  writer  was  detained  one  month  in  Switzerland 
by  the  outbreak  of  hostilities,  and  thereafter  he  shared  in  the 
obsession  common  to  all  American  travellers.  So  absorbing  was 
the  surrounding  atmosphere  of  tragedy  that  in  attempting  to 
treat  the  pastoral  and  more  reposeful  side  of  Dr.  Coit's  work, 
there  was  a  pardonable  confusion  in  his  mind  as  to  which  was  the 
real  digression,  the  war  or  Dr.  Coit.  Every  interest  in  life  seemed 
to  be  cast  into  the  alembic  of  this  world-catastrophe,  to  be  tested 
as  to  its  validity,  Dr.  Coit  and  St.  Paul's  School  along  with  the 

[80] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

significant  is  the  fact  that,  in  the  appalling 
cataclysm  of  Christian  nations,  this  year  of 
our  Lord  1914,  no  appeal  is  heard  which 
derives  from  Christianity.  We  hear  much  of 
a  monopolized  God,  but  nothing  of  Christ 
nor  of  his  message  as  embodied  in  the  Ser- 
mon on  the  Mount.  No  sophistry  can  elim- 
inate from  his  teaching  the  essential  note  of 
humility  and  voluntary  suffering,  and  yet, 
under  the  momentary  despotism  of  the  beast 
that  is  in  all  of  us,  this  note  is  silent.  Even 
the  belief  in  God  is  threatened.  A  Roman 
Catholic  priest  is  reported  to  have  said  re- 
cently in  the  pulpit  of  a  church  in  Paris: 
"If  France  is  again  crushed  in  the  present 
struggle,  then  there  is  no  God."  This  utter- 
ance may  perhaps  be  discounted  as  the  par- 
rest.  For  the  moment  the  literary  handling  of  the  pastoral  work 
of  a  humble  minister  of  the  Gospel  of  Peace  had  an  air  of  absurd 
unreality;  accordingly  the  business  of  composition  was  suspended. 
And  in  resuming  the  essay  after  his  return  to  this  country,  the 
writer  felt  the  need  of  some  hyphen  to  connect  him  once  more  with 
the  world  of  quiet  things.  Hence,  the  war  digression  with  its 
implied  ultimate  victory  of  things  spiritual.  Such  a  victory  would 
have  been  Dr.  Coit's  conviction,  whatever  might  be  the  fortunes 
of  war,  or  his  own  personal  sorrows.  His  faith  in  the  Christian 
revelation  would  have  remained  unshaken. 

[81] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

donable  counsel  of  despair,  but  it  betrays  a 
tendency.  About  the  same  date,  the  second 
week  of  the  war,  a  higher  plane  was  reached 
in  the  passionate  declamation  of  Canon 
Alexander  at  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  who  said: 
"If  England  is  defending  an  unrighteous 
cause,  may  God  break  the  sword  in  her 
hands,  and  make  her  name  a  by-word  among 
the  nations."  This  last  utterance  is  splendid, 
but  as  an  appeal  to  justice  it  rises  no  higher 
than  the  Cardinal  Virtues.  Even  of  these 
virtues,  Justice,  Prudence,  Temperance,  and 
Fortitude,  the  fourth  is  alone  wholly  in  favor; 
temporarily  the  other  three  are  in  abeyance, 
stored  away  for  approval  after  the  passions 
have  been  fully  satisfied.  Perhaps  the  near- 
est approach  to  Christian  doctrine  and  prin- 
ciple is  found  in  the  fine  saying  of  Secretary 
Bryan  that,  'If  one  is  to  further  peace,  he 
must  expect  to  suffer  measurably/  Patience 
and  long-suffering  are,  indeed,  notable  badges 
of  Christianity,  and  neither  material  science 
nor  human  pride  will  ever  rid  the  world  of 
the  necessity,  as  well  as  the  duty,  of  prac- 
[82] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

tising  these  ethics.  Mankind  for  ages 
thought  it  could  get  on  very  well  with  the 
four  Cardinal  Virtues,  but  time  and  again 
history  and  the  human  heart  have  proved 
their  inadequacy.  The  Greek  moralists  sus- 
pected this  want,  and  philosophy  in  all  lands 
and  ages  has  groped  for  the  Christian  com- 
plement. Even  healthy  childhood,  which  is 
nothing  if  not  gorgeously  pagan,  vaguely  feels 
the  need  of  a  deeper  principle.  Very  re- 
cently an  ingenuous  little  boy  at  St.  Paul's 
School  showed  that  he  was  feeling  out  for 
something  better  than  mere  pagan  rectitude 
when,  on  being  asked  to  name  the  cardinal 
virtues,  he  stumbled  over  the  fourth,  but 
thought  that  it  might  be  "Chastitude." 

In  the  general  bewilderment  which  has 
succeeded  to  the  initial  shock  occasioned  by 
the  world-war,  the  leading  minds  of  our  race 
have  difficulty  in  recovering  their  equanimity. 
Something  has  happened.  They  are  not 
quite  so  sure  of  their  position.  Some  great 
things  seem  small,  and  some  neglected  things 
bulk  large.  The  "Paradoxians"  and  other 

[83] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

faddists  are  likely  to  be  among  the  unem- 
ployed for  a  while,  or  will  be  obliged  to  bend 
their  faculties  to  things  that  really  matter. 
Possibly  the  Superman,  the  Futurist,  and 
the  Vorticist  may  disappear  altogether.  No 
prophet  can  foretell  the  issue,  in  regard  to 
things  spiritual,  of  a  catastrophe  which  has 
never  had  a  parallel  in  history.  In  what 
condition  will  the  human  mind  emerge  from 
a  desolating  war  of  three  or  four  years' 
duration?  Will  ideals  be  the  same?  Will 
such  a  word  as  patriotism  have  the  same 
connotation?  At  this  moment,  in  six  coun- 
tries at  least,  the  blood  tingles  at  the  glori- 
ous words  of  Shakespeare: 

SIWARD.    "Had  he  his  hurts  before?" 

Ross.        "Ay,  on  the  front." 

SIWARD.    "Why  then,  God's  soldier  be  he! 

Had  I  as  many  sons  as  I  have  hairs, 

I  would  not  wish  them  to  a  fairer  death." 

But  events  are  moving  fast,  and  men  are 
thinking;  and  the  utter  horror  of  it  all  may 
provoke  a  cry  that  will  rend  the  barriers, 
more  or  less  artificial,  of  nationalism,  and 
make  operative  the  brotherhood  of  the  human 
[84] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

race.  How  local  and  partial  the  sentiment  of 
patriotism  really  is  may  be  seen  from  the 
rapidity  with  which  a  little  injustice  and  a 
little  geography  converts  the  English  patriot 
Washington  into  the  American  patriot  Wash- 
ington. We  certainly  would  not  impugn  even 
remotely  the  absolutely  proper  conduct  of 
our  national  hero,  but  it  is  conceivable  that 
the  time  may  come  when  the  sentiment  of 
loyalty  may  have  another  outlet,  since  men 
will  then  respect  the  all-inclusive  command- 
ment to  "Love  one  another." 

In  the  meantime,  the  sorrowful  limitations 
of  human  nature  will  assert  themselves. 
Priests  shall  thunder  forth  the  Sixth  and  the 
Tenth  commandments,  but  the  war  will  still 
continue,  and  the  great  Christian  inconsist- 
ency place  itself  on  record.  Surely  no  Ger- 
man, English,  French  or  Russian  missionary 
can  henceforth  find  much  standing  in  heathen 
countries.  The  least  sophisticated  savage  of 
the  South  Sea  islands  will  politely  decline  his 
good  offices,  on  the  ground  that  he  has  his 
own  traditional  mode  of  slugging,  and  prefers 

[85] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

it.  His  confusion  of  mind  will  be  still  fur- 
ther augmented  by  being  told  that  war  is  a 
"biological  necessity,"  even  though  in  the 
same  breath  he  is  taught  to  say:  "Vergib  uns 
unsere  Schulden,  wie  wir  unsern  Schuldigern 
vergeben."  And  yet,  it  is  through  these  con- 
tradictions intensified  by  the  glare  of  burning 
towns  that  the  minds  of  men  are  being 
brought  back  from  the  shallows  of  a  material 
age  to  the  deep  facts  of  existence.  We  all 
know  in  our  hearts  that  we  are  capable  of 
every  conceivable  form  of  crime,  but  we  had 
forgotten  it.  We  have  constantly  asserted 
in  our  formularies  that  we  are  "by  nature 
born  in  sin  and  the  children  of  wrath,"  and 
we  do  not  believe  it.  But  the  Christian 
Church  believes  it,  and  has  consistently 
taught  it  notwithstanding  the  lapses  of  her 
practice;  and  to-day  she  offers  to  a  bewil- 
dered world  Love  and  Forgiveness  as  the  only 
economic  forces  potent  enough  to  meet  on 
their  own  ground  the  hateful  passions  of 
mankind.  She  says  to-day,  as  she  has  said 
through  the  ages,  though  often  with  a  lisp- 
[86] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

ing  accent,  that  the  spirit  of  the  Beatitudes 
is  the  only  panacea  for  the  heart-breaking 
sorrows  of  life,  and  that  the  doctrine  of  the 
Incarnation  is  the  only  solution  of  the  mys- 
tery of  existence.  The  entire  world  desires 
peace,  but  there  can  be  no  peace  if  the  indi- 
vidual will  is  set  on  its  own  selfish  ends. 
No  man  can  be  a  just  man,  much  more,  a 
Christian  man,  if  his  major  note  is  vindic- 
tiveness.  The  "things  that  belong  unto 
peace"  are  individual  rather  than  gregarious, 
and  come  from  a  habit  of  mind  rather  than 
from  an  impulse.  Peace-meetings  and  peace- 
litanies  are  wholly  good,  as  tending  to  create 
the  atmosphere  that  will  promote  peace. 
We  pray  because  we  are  bidden  to  do  so. 
But  God's  ways  are  inscrutable,  and  there 
is  a  species  of  cant  in  ascribing  to  Him  at 
the  present  crisis  an  assured  disciplinary 
function.  We  cannot  without  hypocrisy  say 
that  we  are  grateful  for  the  chastening  effect 
of  this  dreadful  war.  We  naively  sympa- 
thize rather  with  the  intuitions  of  the  little 
culprit  who  was  punished  by  his  human 

[87] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

father,  and  who  said,  when  his  father  averred 
that  the  chastisement  hurt  him  more  than 
it  did  the  boy,  that  he  was  very  contrite  at 
the  thought  of  obliging  him  to  suffer  so  much. 

And  yet  it  may  well  be  that  the  present 
unspeakable  agony  of  the  entire  world  is  to 
furnish  the  greatest  practical  argument  of  the 
ages  in  behalf  of  the  truth  of  God's  moral 
plan  for  his  creatures.  The  frightful  carnage 
and  waste  of  every  sort,  along  with  the  con- 
sequent despair  in  countless  homes,  will  lead 
men  to  look  beneath  the  surface  of  trivial 
things  in  order  to  find  some  reason  for  liv- 
ing. And  they  will  find  it  in  the  Gospel  of 
Jesus  Christ,  and  they  will  find  peace  in  the 
consolations  which  the  Church,  notwithstand- 
ing her  occasional  aberrations,  has  always 
offered  in  her  offices  and  ministry. 

It  was  such  a  genuine  Christianity,  in  the 
full  historic  sense,  that  possessed  the  soul  of 
Henry  Coit.  "His  master-motive  was  the 
love  of  Christ,  the  love  of  souls  and  a  burn- 
ing zeal  for  the  service  of  that  Church 
in  which  he  believed  are  garnered  up  the 

[88] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

treasures  of  grace,  with  all  that  comes  to  us 
from  a  primitive  antiquity,  and  the  long  line 
of  Truth's  witnesses  and  a  divine  succession 
of  the  benefactors  of  the  human  race."  The 
pastoral  heart,  which  was  his  dominant  note 
through  life,  developed  early,  and  its  direc- 
tion became  manifest  in  the  conduct  of  his 
charge  of  the  parish  school  at  Lancaster, 
Pennsylvania,  in  the  three  years  from  1851 
to  1854.  He  was  but  twenty-four  years  of 
age,  and  yet  the  entire  Henry  Coit  of  later 
years  was  there  potentially.  The  following 
letter,  which  was  addressed  to  his  boys  as  a 
holiday  monition,  is  strikingly  characteristic 
of  the  wise  and  loving  pastor  in  his  prime. 

"My  DEAR  BOYS: 

"Though  what  is  good  for  one  vacation  is 
good  for  another  also,  yet  I  am  quite  sure 
that  it  will  not  be  amiss  for  -me  to  send  you 
a  second  letter,  if  only  to  assure  you  that  I 
have  you  all  in  remembrance,  and  to  remind 
you  of  those  hints  and  directions  which  I 
have  already  given,  to  enable  you  to  make 
this  vacation  a  good  one. 

[89] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

"Do  not  begrudge  a  little  of  your  present 
leisure  to  voluntary  work.  The  useful  read- 
ing or  study  which  you  do  now  of  your  own 
accord  will  be  worth  twice  as  much  to  you 
as  the  same  amount  performed  in  the  regular 
course  of  school  duties.  Take  up  some  book 
of  history,  biography,  or  travels  suited  to 
your  capacity,  and  read  it  carefully  through. 
If  you  set  apart  a  fixed  hour  every  day  for 
this  purpose  you  will  be  much  more  likely 
to  be  systematic  and  to  accomplish  what  you 
undertake.  The  time  which  you  spend  in 
active  manly  exercise  —  as  riding  on  horse- 
back, boating  —  is  not  lost.  Those  hours 
only  are  lost,  and  lost  to  your  lasting  injury, 
which  you  waste  in  listless  lounging.  Loung- 
ing at  home  is  bad  for  your  mind  and  trouble- 
some to  your  friends.  Lounging  in  the  streets 
is  bad  for  mind  and  morals  both.  Make 
your  time  pass  swiftly  and  happily  by  keep- 
ing mind  and  body  in  healthful  exercise. 
Have  the  manliness  to  keep  out  of  the  way 
of  idle,  worthless  boys,  of  whom  there  are  so 
many  here  and  everywhere  —  whose  words 
are  profane  and  vile  —  whose  actions  are  low, 
vulgar,  mischievous  and  corrupting.  About 
such  company  say,  in  the  words  of  one  better 
and  wiser  than  any  of  us:  "O  my  soul,  come 

[90] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

not  thou  into  their  secret;  unto  their  as- 
sembly, mine  honor,  be  not  thou  united." 
It  is  these  "evil  communications"  which  "cor- 
rupt good  manners,"  which  make  me  dread 
the  holidays  for  you,  and  against  which  no 
one  can  guard  you  successfully  but  your- 
selves. 

"If  you  attend  to  what  is  said  above,  then 
I  am  sure  you  will  return  to  school  after  va- 
cation improved  and  strengthened  in  mind 
and  body.  I  hope  none  of  you  will  forget 
to  read  your  chapter  daily.  If  any  of  you 
have  neglected  it  so  far,  be  persuaded  to  be- 
gin now,  not  for  my  sake  only,  but  for  your 
own  good.  Do  not  think  there  can  be  a 
vacation  from  what  is  right.  There  is  never 
a  day  on  which  we  can  lawfully  take  vaca- 
tion from  prayer  to  our  Heavenly  Father. 
Why  should  we  ever  wish  for  one?  Begin 
and  end  these  days  of  rest  by  asking  God's 
care  and  blessing.  Do  not  make  your  vaca- 
tion —  Sundays  —  vacations  from  going  to 
Church.  Rather  use  them  well  now,  that 
your  well-spent  Sundays  may  shed  their  light 
over  all  the  days  that  follow. 

"I  wish  that  I  could  help  you  all  by  some 
more  effectual  means  than  words,  to  spend 
this  season  well.  Besides  these  my  words  of 

[91] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

affectionate  counsel  and  persuasion,  you  shall 
have  my  hearty  prayer.  May  God  bless  you 
all,  and  keep  you  both  now  and  ever  from 
forgetting  your  duty  to  Him. 

"Your   affectionate   and   faithful   friend, 

H.  A.  COIT. 

St.  James's  School,  Lancaster,  July  13,  1854." 

It  must  have  been  at  about  this  date  also 
that  the  daguerreotype  picture  fronting  this 
page  was  taken.  Recently  found,  along  with 
the  letter  printed  above,  it  is  a  boon  indeed 
to  all  of  us  who  care  for  the  truth  of  things, 
and,  who,  though  surprised  at  the  fresh, 
youthful  visage  and  quaint  attire,  are  not 
shocked  at  the  thought  that  the  grave  Doctor 
could  ever  have  faced  life  with  so  fearless  and 
care-free  a  gaze.  Such  a  face  is  its  own  in- 
terpretation, and  may  well  be  a  symbol  of 
the  valorous  attitude  that  should  mark  all 
the  efforts  of  St.  Paul's, 

"To  take  arms  against  a  sea  of  troubles, 
And  by  opposing  end  them." 

The  story  of  Dr.  Coit's  personal  relations 
with  his  boys  on  the  religious  side  is  an  inti- 
[92] 


HENRY     AUGUSTUS     COIT 

From  a  daguerreotype  about  1854- 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

mate  one  and  must  be  treated  with  due  re- 
serve; in  no  event  will  it  appeal  to  all  readers. 
Doubtless  many  letters  could  be  collected, 
and  many  moving  anecdotes  could  be  re- 
lated, but  nothing  would  be  gained  by  lift- 
ing the  veil  from  the  deep  things  of  life; 
and  the  slightest  exaggeration  or  indiscre- 
tion would  weaken  the  argument.  Every 
genuine  old  boy  will  bear  testimony  in  his 
heart  to  the  tireless  efforts  of  Dr.  Coit  to 
bring  out  the  best  that  was  in  him.  Indeed, 
it  is  only  for  convenience  that  the  pastoral 
side  of  the  first  Rector  is  made  a  sub-division 
in  this  essay;  it  was  in  reality  his  one  ab- 
sorbing side.  Everything  with  him  seemed 
to  have  a  spiritual  quality. 

The  first  two  decades  of  the  school  history 
were  lived  in  an  atmosphere  which  might 
fairly  be  called  theological.  Not  a  few  of 
the  masters  were  studying  for  the  ministry, 
and  theological  text-books  were  much  in  evi- 
dence. The  writer  was  necessarily  won  over 
to  the  compelling  interests  of  his  friends,  Hall 
Harrison,  John  Hargate,  Robert  A.  Benton, 

[93] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

George  B.  Johnson  and  Charles  A.  Morrill. 
Ordinations  were  not  infrequent,  and  church 
questions  were  burning  subjects.  We  did  not 
always  agree,  but  a  moderate  and  reasoned 
high-churchmanship  prevailed.  One  could 
not  but  become  familiar  with  the  books  most 
in  vogue:  "Pearson  on  the  Creed,"  "Browne 
on  the  Articles,"  "Butler's  Analogy,"  "Bull 
on  the  Incarnation,"  "Andrewes'  Sermons," 
"Jeremy  Taylor,"  not  to  speak  of  the 
"Fathers,"  Cornelius  a  Lapide  and  the 
"Commentaries."  The  writer  at  about  this 
date  read  St.  John's  Gospel  in  Greek  with 
Dr.  Coit,  and  contracted  a  living  conviction 
of  the  verbal  inspiration  of  Scripture.  He 
has  no  quarrel  now  with  any  particular 
theory  of  inspiration,  but,  at  the  time,  from 
out  his  twenty  years,  he  felt  a  great  awe  at 
the  thought  of  any  trifling  with  a  Greek 
letter,  and  was  wholly  with  Dr.  Coit  in 
ascribing  a  sort  of  moral  obliquity  to  Dean 
Alford  when  he  made  Iva  denote  purpose 
when  it  should  be  result,  or  result  when  it 
should  be  purpose.  The  boys  naturally  had 
[94] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

no  direct  share  in  the  labors  and  aspirations 
of  their  guides,  but  they  caught  much  of  the 
prevailing  tone.  Many  were  sincerely  relig- 
ious. Dr.  Coit  differed  (uncompromisingly 
with  Arnold  in  his  estimate  of  the  capacity 
of  the  boy  for  religious  training.  Dr.  Arnold 
had  said  in  a  letter  to  a  friend,  "My  object 
will  be,  if  possible,  to  form  Christian  men, 
for  Christian  boys  I  can  scarcely  hope  to 
make.  I  mean  that  from  the  naturally  im- 
perfect state  of  boyhood,  they  are  not  sus- 
ceptible of  Christian  principles  in  their  full 
development  and  practice."  But  Dr.  Coit 
boldly  aimed  at  making  Christian  boys,  and 
he  was  willing  to  risk  their  turning  out 
Christian  men.  Doubtless  he  felt  with  Plato 
that  Virtue  is  Knowledge  and  can  be  taught; 
he  certainly  believed  that  boys  are  capable 
of  genuine  religious  faith  and  devotion.  And 
yet,  we  fancy  that  Arnold  and  Coit  were  not 
very  far  apart  after  all  in  their  practice,  for 
Arnold  himself  was  reproached  by  his  critics 
for  an  over-emphasis  on  moral  thoughtful- 
ness  and  introspection  in  his  boys. 

[95] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

The  agencies  which  will  recur  to  the  minds 
of  alumni  as  chiefly  developing  the  religious 
and  moral  tone  of  the  St.  Paul's  boy  in  Dr. 
Henry  Coit's  time  are:  the  weekly  Sacred 
Studies,  the  Confirmation  class,  the  Sunday 
morning  sermon,  regularly  by  the  Rector, 
and  the  chapel  services;  to  which  may  be 
added  the  Thursday  Night  Talk,  "Causerie 
dujeudi."  These  agencies  are  in  every  church- 
school,  and,  formally,  are  about  the  same 
thing.  The  great  point  is  that  they  should 
be  instinct  with  life  and  meaning.  Dr.  Coit, 
as  might  be  surmised,  was  not  particularly 
systematic  or  dogmatic  in  his  handling  of 
sacred  lessons.  Very  sensitive  as  to  text- 
books, he  was  inclined  to  make  his  own  man- 
uals, basing  the  junior  instruction  on  the 
Church  Catechism,  and  the  more  expository 
teaching  of  the  Seniors  on  the  Collects  and 
Gospels  for  each  Sunday.  In  later  years 
text-books  of  Bible  history  were  introduced. 
For  a  long  time  he  taught  all  the  classes  in 
person,  esteeming  this  to  be  his  peculiarly 
clerical  and  responsible  work.  As  the  school 

[96] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

grew  in  numbers,  this  work  had  to  be  shared, 
but  he  was  always  solicitous  that  it  should 
be  performed  in  a  dignified  manner,  setting 
it  apart  from  the  secular  studies  of  the  week 
and  stripping  it  of  the  perfunctory.  No 
written  examinations  in  sacred  studies  were 
thought  of  in  the  earlier  days,  but  the  for- 
midable oral  examination  in  the  Catechism, 
which  took  place  twice  a  year  in  the  School 
Chapel,  dates  back  to  the  beginning  of  things. 
This  public  function  has  been  the  secret 
terror  and  the  utter  undoing  of  the  best  of 
us  since  time  was. 

It  has  been  objected  by  some  of  the  faith- 
ful that  our  religious  teaching  here  has  never 
been  definite  enough,  that  our  boys  are  not 
technically  fortified  against  criticism  and 
assaults  of  unbelief.  If  this  were  in  a  meas- 
ure true,  and  if  it  were  due  to  the  quality 
of  Dr.  Coit's  instruction,  it  would  not  sur- 
prise those  who  had  lived  close  to  him. 
For  his  belief  seemed  of  the  kind  that  had 
got  beyond  the  evidential  stage  and  was 
wholly  absorbed  in  the  contemplation  of  its 

[97] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

object.  He  did  not  seem  to  crave,  at  least 
in  the  days  of  his  best  work,  a  remorselessly 
logical  statement  of  all  dogmas  that  divide 
men.  He  would  not  teach  more  definitely 
than  he  thought.  We  remember  very  well 
his  quoting  with  warm  approval,  in  one  of 
his  addresses  at  Communicants'  Meeting, 
the  cautious  words  of  Queen  Elizabeth  re- 
garding the  Eucharist: 

"  Christ  was  the  word  that  spake  it; 
He  took  the  bread  and  brake  it; 
And  what  His  word  did  make  it, 
That  I  believe  and  take  it." 

V 

But  his  theology  does  not  concern  us 
directly  here,  even  if  we  felt  able  to  assess  it; 
elsewhere  a  separate  paper  might  well  be 
given  to  Dr.  Coit's  theological  position  in 
the  Church.  Such  a  paper  has  already  been 
suggested  to  his  eldest  son,  the  Rev.  Charles 
Wheeler  Coit,  who  would  treat  the  subject 
with  perfect  competency,  and  who  would, 
undoubtedly,  stress  a  certain  yearning  for 
what  is  termed  catholic  truth  that  marked 
Dr.  Coit's  later  years. 

[98] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

A  cursory  reading  of  the  single  volume  of 
the  first  Rector's  sermons,  published  by 
Moffat,  Yard  &  Co.,  will  begin  by  puzzling 
and  presently  by  reassuring  any  one  who 
heard  them  delivered  year  after  year.  At 
the  moment  of  delivery,  they  went  straight 
to  their  mark,  reinforced  by  the  personality 
of  the  speaker;  our  memories  pronounce 
them  great.  We  cannot  now,  when  no  longer 
under  the  spell  of  living  voice  and  manner, 
say  that  they  are  great  as  literature;  but 
perhaps  they  were  better  than  literature. 
Written  for  the  adolescent  and  the  immature, 
often  in  haste  and  amid  constant  interrup- 
tions, with  little  conscious  effort  at  form  or 
style,  these  sermons  must  not  be  compared 
with  the  formal  utterance  of  men  whose 
business  is  preaching.  And  yet,  they  seem 
to  the  writer  not  unworthy  to  stand  this 
comparison,  if  the  proper  object  of  preaching 
be  to  stimulate  the  conscience  and  direct  the 
will.  Dr.  Coit  aimed  at  scarcely  more  than 
this.  Not  infrequently  there  are  passages  of 
great  beauty  and  strong  imagination,  but 

[99] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

they  were  spontaneous  and  not  studied.  A 
pulpit  style,  "travaille,"  as  the  French  say, 
was  as  foreign  to  his  literary  habits  as  to 
his  nature.  We  cannot  easily  imagine  him 
polishing  his  phrase,  and,  as  to  epigrams, 
they  did  not  readily  pass  the  door  of  his  lips. 
His  method  of  composition  was  patterned 
after  the  Port  Royalist  dictum:  "Une  seule 
fois,  sous  Vceil  de  la  Grace,"  and  the  further 
injunction:  "Arroser  son  ouvrage  par  des 
prieres."  And  thus  fortified,  his  chief  quali- 
fication was  his  unrivalled  knowledge  of  the 
human  soul  and  his  deep  sympathy  with 
the  problems  of  boys,  whom  he  did  not 
aim  at  probing  by  writing  down  to  their 
level,  but  by  pulling  them  up  to  his  own 
standards. 

After  these  sympathetic  premises,  it  is  at 
some  risk  that  one  proceeds  to  cite  illustra- 
tions. We  shall  quote,  however,  two  pas- 
sages from  these  sermons,  taken  almost  at 
random,  which  seem  to  represent  fairly  his 
habit  of  practical  preaching,  though  they  are 
not,  perhaps,  in  his  most  brilliant  manner. 

[100] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

(1) 

"There  is  a  helpful  use  of  the  imagination. 
We  may  call  upon  it  to  aid  us  in  laying  out 
the  work  of  our  lives,  or  rather  in  laying  that 
basis  of  principle  which  gives  ground  for  hope 
that  our  work,  whatever  it  is,  will,  some  of  it, 
be  lasting.  Try  to  make  such  use  of  this 
gift  of  God  now.  Imagine  one  of  you,  who 
have  been  scholars  here  during  this  last  year, 
coming  back  fifty  years  hence  —  in  1939  — 
to  see  the  scenes  where  several  years  of  his 
life  were  passed,  and  those,  as  he  would  then 
realize,  by  no  means  the  least  important.  Of 
course,  I  ask  you  to  prop  your  imagination 
with  the  hope  and  confidence  that  the  School 
itself  may  live  and  grow  stronger  with  the 
flight  of  time;  that  while  many  outward 
features  are  changed,  still  some  landmarks 
will  remain.  This  holy  place,  for  example, 
mellowed  by  the  lapse  of  years,  its  tower 
completed,  the  windows  filled  with  storied 
panes,  a  glorious  reredos  in  its  proper  place, 
the  Saints  of  all  ages  looking  down  from 
window,  niche,  and  screen,  or  gathered  above 
the  altar  around  their  Lord,  their  strength 
and  refuge.  It  is  the  last  Evensong  of  the 
last  Sunday  of  the  term.  The  bells  chime  out 

[101] 


AUGUSTUS  COIT 

the  long  file  of  boys,  masters 
and  clergy  enters.  With  curious,  mingled 
sensations  he,  who  to-day  sits  here  a  lad,  but 
then  a  man,  with  a  large  experience  of  life, 
whose  struggle  is  nearly  over,  looks  on,  and, 
as  he  looks,  almost  loses  the  present  in  the 
past  so  far  away.  Again  he  hears  the  organ's 
glorious  voice,  and  the  old  prayers  and  psalrns 
said  by  strange  lips,  in  tones  that  are  strange 
to  him.  He  strains  his  eyes  and  memory 
along  the  seats  and  stalls,  and  beyond  the 
chancel  arch,  but  sees  not  one  face  of  all  so 
familiar  to  him  now.  He  pauses  and  thinks 
of  this  one  and  that  one,  gone;  their  roll  of 
life  ended  and  folded  up  and  laid  away.  One 
lies  in  the  bed  of  ocean,  the  graveyards 
through  the  land  hold  of  most  of  the  others 
the  mouldering  dust.  Several  of  the  younger 
here,  he  afterwards  may  learn,  are  still,  with 
whitening  hair  and  ripening  wisdom,  carrying 
on  the  work.  Several  in  older  manhood,  it 
may  be  (God  grant  it!),  are  doing  His  work 
in  the  Church  in  high  or  lowly  office,  in  parts 
of  the  world  still  unwon  to  Christ,  or  in  those 
nearer  home,  where  what  is  known  by  multi- 
tudes of  saving  truth  only  becomes  their  con- 
demnation. He  will  think  of  some  he  knew 
here  who  had  started  life  poorly  and  inade- 
[102] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

quately,  and  then,  by  God's  grace,  remem- 
bered their  better  lessons,  and  turned  to  Him 
with  all  their  hearts;  and  of  others  who  still 
went  on  reckless  of  good,  neither  hearing  nor 
heeding  the  warning  voice,  and  of  whom  none 
may  say,  "Their  witness  is  in  Heaven,  and 
their  record  is  on  high."  But  of  the  larger 
number  of  those  who  are  gathered  here  to- 
day the  history  of  their  earthly  lives  will  by 
that  time  be  over.  Cold  hearts  and  tender 
hearts,  the  corrupt  body  and  the  body  unde- 
filed,  will  alike  be  wasting  away  as  fast  as 
the  action  of  natural  forces  can  waste  them; 
only  the  spirits  will  live  on,  and  fifty  years 
hence  will  be  as  living  and  as  conscious  of 
their  identity  as  is  each  one  at  the  present 
moment.  Suppose  this  visitor  to  have  drawn 
the  obvious  inferences  from  the  experience  of 
life.  It  will  occur  to  him  that  some  stay  is 
needed  for  a  man  in  presence  of  this  fact  of 
continual  decay  and  change,  something  to 
compensate  for  the  losses,  to  uphold  and 
secure  one  amid  such  shocks  and  disasters  of 
time.  It  is  no  consolation  to  know  that  these 
earthly  bodies  will,  after  a  little,  be  taken  up 
and  distributed  through  the  material  universe, 
and  find  their  involuntary  perpetuation  in 
grasses  and  vapors,  in  trees  and  meadow 

[103] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

flowers.  Where  meanwhile  is  the  part  to  be 
that  never  dies?  —  that  in  us  which  lives  and 
loves,  and  does  not  and  cannot  forget?  Is 
there  nothing  to  hold  by,  when  all  men  have 
forgotten  that  such  a  being  as  I  ever  was?  Is 
there  no  memory  in  which  I  may  live  on, 
save  that  which  is  now  registering,  though 
unheeded,  all  my  neglects  of  duty  and  all  my 
misdeeds? 

Our  visitor  (you  will  remember  he  is  one 
of  you),  with  fifty  years  added  to  his  mental 
and  physical  development,  goes  back  in 
thought  to  what  he  himself  has  known  and 
observed.  He  has  had  his  share  of  what  is 
called  pleasure,  social  enjoyments  and  dis- 
tinctions, gayeties  and  sights,  and  keen  physi- 
cal excitement,  and  gratification  of  the  senses, 
ease  and  travel,  books  and  pictures  and  art, 
the  love  and  appreciation  of  which  is  in  so 
many  cases  a  mere  sham  and  pretence. 
What  comfort  or  relief  comes  from  these 
delights,  when  the  real  storms  break  and  the 
spirit  is  thrown  back  upon  itself  for  peace 
and  inward  satisfaction?  What  support  will 
even  the  more  innocent  and  less  selfish  pleas- 
ures give,  when  the  body,  the  link  between 
our  true  selves  and  this  outer  world,  lies  a 
wreck  on  the  graveyard  shore,  and  the  im- 

[104] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

material  world  here  becomes  the  real  one, 
and  our  only  fellowship  is  with  good  and 
holy  spirits,  or  with  spirits  of  evil?  Suppose 
one  to  have  been  greatly  favored  in  the 
accumulation  of  riches.  It  requires  ability 
in  a  man  to  amass  wealth,  and  there  is  an 
intellectual  gratification  in  planning  and  suc- 
ceeding in  its  acquisition.  And  its  possession 
counts  in  the  world;  it  gives  power  and 
worship  among  men.  Its  right  and  wise  use 
enrolls  one  among  the  benefactors  of  mankind. 
Its  accompaniments  may  do  much  to  ennoble 
and  exalt  one,  if  not  perverted  to  merely 
selfish  ends.  But  the  richest  of  men  comes 
to  a  moment  when  all  that  wealth  can  pur- 
chase is  worthless  to  him.  Even  now,  it 
never  wins  true  love  and  loyalty,  but  is 
rather  a  stumbling-block  to  these,  and  in 
the  hour  of  death  it  avails  nothing,  nor 
gives  one  courage  or  covert  for  the  exigen- 
cies of  that  new  and  untried  existence.  It 
may  make  it  harder  to  leave  this  world,  but 
it  does  not  help  one  in  doing  so.  And  as  to 
honor  and  position  among  men,  this  is  the 
conclusion  at  which  a  really  great  man  ar- 
rived: "Years  fly  swiftly,  and  it  is  full  time 
to  be  reasonable,  and  to  look  on  life  no  longer 
dazzled  by  the  sunbeams  of  youth.  Let  us 

[105] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

be  just  towards  God.  He  has  not  created 
men  that  they  may  attain  celebrity,  a  thing 
which  few  ever  reach,  or  care  for  when  they 
have  reached  it.  God  knows  the  littleness  of 
the  world  too  well  to  give  His  creatures  so 
poor  an  aim  as  that.  He  created  the  stars 
in  order  to  disgust  us  with  it.  Glory  is  the 
illusion  of  childhood  and  of  some  men  who 
never  quite  grow  out  of  childish  ways.  A 
soul  really  capable  of  glory  does  not  think 
about  it;  he  is  too  great  for  that."  So  muses 
the  man  of  nearly  seventy  years,  as  he  re- 
visits the  scenes  of  his  boyish  failures  or  suc- 
cesses. Where  are  those  whom  he  knew  in 
these  far-off  days?  What  has  been  the  issue 
in  this  and  the  other  world  of  these  lives? 
Of  their  training  here  and  elsewhere  for  good 
or  evil?  Did  they  sow  to  the  flesh,  of  the 
flesh  to  reap  corruption?  Or,  with  all  mis- 
takes and  hindrances,  to  the  spirit,  to  reap 
life  everlasting?  For  surely  as  men  sow, 
they  reap,  and  none  can  think  that  pleas- 
ures or  riches  or  honors  or  any  other  earthly 
props  will  stand  the  sweep  and  pressure  of 
Eternity." 


[106] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

(2) 

"Look  at  the  picture  in  the  parable.  It  is 
drawn  by  Everlasting  Truth.  It  shows  us 
how  the  imagination,  the  memory,  the  power 
of  association  are  Divinely  given  to  help  us 
against  our  temptations;  in  the  words  of  the 
Litany,  "To  strengthen  us  when  we  do  stand, 
to  raise  us  up  when  we  fall,  and  finally  to 
beat  down  Satan  under  our  feet."  The  youth 
in  the  parable  whom  we  all  call  the  prodigal 
son,  though  he  is  not  called  that  in  the  Gos- 
pel, has  had  a  sorrowful  experience.  He  has 
cast  off  restraint,  the  restraint  of  love  and 
duty,  of  home  and  conscience  —  of  law,  social 
and  Divine.  To  use  a  late  phrase,  he  has 
wearied  of  the  stagnation  of  comfort,  the 
quiet  order,  the  loving  care  of  his  father's 
house.  Like  so  many,  he  has  undervalued 
the  sweetness  of  innocence,  of  lying  down 
at  night  and  rising  in  the-  morning  in  health 
of  body  and  mind,  with  no  black  stain  in 
the  memory,  no  frenzied  grip  at  some  base 
indulgence,  which  has  come  to  grief  in  the 
possession,  just  as  an  apple  of  painted  glass 
would  in  the  hands  of  a  child.  The  hot 
blood  surges  through  his  veins,  and  cries 
out  for  freedom  to  have  his  own  and  do 

[107] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

what  he  will  with  it.  The  daily  round  of 
prayer  and  blessing  is  irksome.  Any  daily 
round  is  irksome.  He  chafes  at  his  moth- 
er's gentle  remonstrances  and  his  father's 
firm  refusals.  He  has  taken  the  privileges 
of  his  childhood  as  of  course,  with  no 
thought  of  gratitude  to  the  Giver  of  all 
good  things.  The  peace  and  plenty  of  his 
home,  the  innocent  enjoyments,  the  sun- 
shine of  parental  love,  the  opportunities  for 
training  in  every  good,  useful,  noble  pursuit 
have  no  value  in  his  eyes.  He  will  have  none 
of  them.  He  tires  of  them  all.  Innocence 
is  stupid.  Goodness  is  life  on  a  dull  level. 
O  for  the  wilderness  and  the  sea!  To  try 
things  for  one's  self,  to  pluck  at  will  the 
poisonous  wild  flowers,  to  lose  his  way  in 
the  trackless  desert,  to  stray  into  the  portal 
and  chambers  of  moral  death!  This  is  what 
A.,  B.,  and  a  great  many  more,  are  doing. 
And  why  not  I?  His  short  sight  does  not 
reach  the  final  stages,  or  his  self-confidence 
imagines  that  he  can  hold  back  from  that 
uttermost  downfall.  What  he  wants  is  life, 
without  conscience,  without  duty,  without 
God.  This  he  fancies  is  to  live  like  a  man, 
with  some  dash  and  swing  and  sparkle  in 
life,  although  he  shatters  a  father's  hopes 
[108] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

and  breaks  his  mother's  heart.  In  the  true 
history  of  the  Gospel,  the  waste  and  riot 
and  the  infinite  folly  are  traced  to  their  end. 
A  far-off  land  of  desolation,  a  region  of  the 
shadow  of  death,  desertion  of  summer  friends, 
utter,  abject  want,  the  soul's  famine,  the 
body's  starvation,  complete  degradation,  only 
to  be  expressed  by  feeding  on  swine's  food 
and  the  feeding  of  swine  —  such  is  the  issue 
of  swinish  standards  of  living  and  swinish 
pleasures.  Is  it  not  absolute  bondage?  Where 
is  the  fancied  freedom?  The  emancipation 
from  the  bonds  of  duty  to  follow  one's  own 
will?  Is  it  not  the  worst  of  slaveries?  Then 
when  the  inevitable  hour  comes,  and  the  fires 
of  passion  are  spent,  and  the  precious  gifts  of 
life  exhausted,  memory  becomes  an  avenger. 
The  thought  of  the  past  is  an  awful  reproach, 
The  early  days,  before  vice  had  taken  root, 
come  back  to  him,  when  the  morning  land 
was  fresh  with  the  verdure  and  blossoms  of 
spring,  when  the  voice  of  parents  was  sweet 
in  childish  ears,  and  the  chances  of  happiness 
and  blessing,  of  noble,  unselfish  action,  of  life 
rising  higher  and  higher  to  all  things  virtu- 
ous and  lovely  and  of  good  report,  still  lay 
in  the  near  distance,  and  ignorance  of  evil 
was  indeed  bliss.  All  this  rises  before  the 

[109] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

mind  of  the  broken,  remorseful,  hopeless 
spendthrift.  What  might  have  been!  That  is 
the  barbed  arrow  that  rankles  in  the  wound. 
While  his  choice  was  still  in  his  hands,  and 
the  lovely  helps  of  home,  and  the  means  and 
encouragements  God  devises  to  win  us  to 
His  service  were  still  his,  how  had  he  tossed 
them  away!  And  now  where  ana  I?  and 
what  am  I?  Compare  this  and  that.  The 
swinish  pleasures  and  the  swinish  companion- 
ship; the  loathesome  conversation,  the  beg- 
garly end  of  it  all;  and  there  in  the  dear  old 
home  were  cheerful  gladness,  and  tender 
greetings,  and  plenteous  food  for  mind  and 
heart  as  well  as  body  —  the  Bread  of  Life 
was  and  is  there!  "How  many  hired  ser- 
vants of  my  father's  have  bread  enough  and 
to  spare,  and  I  perish  with  hunger!"  Alas! 
In  the  majority  of  cases,  the  lost  soul  stops 
here.  I  must  warn  all  of  you  younger  ones 
who  are  before  me  that  it  is  not  safe  to  count 
on  rising  like  the  prodigal  in  our  Blessed 
Lord's  parable  from  the  thought  of  what 
might  have  been  to  the  hope  of  what  yet 
may  be.  Vicious  indulgence,  sinning  against 
light  and  knowledge,  paralyzes  the  moral 
powers.  The  long  disuse  of  prayer  incapaci- 
tates one  for  praying.  Reason  and  experi- 
[110] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

ence  may  enter  their  unanswerable  protests, 
memory  and  association  may  call  from  the 
years  long  past,  but  the  will  may  be  hope- 
lessly weakened.  As  I  have  seen  again  and 
again,  the  man  may  have  no  excuse  to  offer, 
he  is  miserable  and  knows  it  and  owns  it, 
but  he  dreads  moral  effort.  When  he  tries 
to  rise,  his  chains  weigh  more  heavily;  when 
he  makes  a  step  forward,  they  rattle,  he  loses 
heart;  the  Tempter  is  always  close  by  to 
whisper,  "It  is  of  no  use."  And  so  in  the 
fearful  language  of  St.  Peter:  "The  dog  is 
turned  to  his  own  vomit  again;  and  the 
sow  that  was  washed  to  her  wallowing  in 
the  mire."  Very  likely  he  may  have  already 
provided  himself  with  a  reason  for  inaction. 
He  has  no  faith.  He  has  taken  up  with  some 
form  of  plausible  error.  He  has  discovered 
that  the  Scriptures  are  found  unworthy  of 
credence.  There  is  no  logical  foundation  for 
the  Gospel  history.  It  is  full  of  legendary 
accretions.  Therefore,  there  is  no  Saviour, 
no  Precious  Blood  poured  freely  out  to  cleanse 
him  from  his  sins,  no  intercession,  and  no 
Intercessor.  Everything  is  uncertain  and  un- 
provable.  If  there  is  a  God,  He  is  too  far 
away  or  too  kind  to  mark  my  infirmities,  or 
to  hold  me  to  account  for  them.  It  is  all  a 

cm] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

chance  or  a  fatality.  I  cannot  help  myself. 
And  so,  the  day  of  grace  passes,  and  the 
shadows  lengthen,  and  that  night  comes  on, 
in  which  there  is  no  possibility  of  self -deceiv- 
ing and  no  opportunity  for  repentance,  though 
one  sought  for  it  carefully  and  with  tears. 
Many  of  us  here  may  feel  that  this  is  an 
extreme  case;  that  it  does  not  apply  to  us; 
that  we  have  not  strayed  far  from  the  paths 
of  righteousness;  that  still  sweet  in  our  ears 
sound  the  Church  bells  of  our  home;  that 
we  have  not  utterly  broken  with  our  child- 
hood. But,  if  we  are  conscious  that  inno- 
cence of  evil  is  no  longer  ours;  if  we  know 
of  some  easily  besetting  sin;  if  we  find  our 
prayers,  whether  in  public  or  private,  tedious 
and  unprofitable;  if  we  are  glad  of  an  excuse 
to  omit  them;  if  we  set  little  value  on  that 
Bread  of  Life  which  is  broken  on  these 
earthly  Altars  for  our  souls*  salvation;  if 
our  preparation  for  It  is  very  slight,  and  our 
sense  of  need  of  It  numbed  and  callous  — 
then  make  sure  we  should  contrast  what 
might  have  been  with  what  is,  and  before  it 
is  too  late,  while  youth  and  time  are  ours 
(or  if  not  youth,  still  some  measure  of  health 
and  some  little  time),  to  think  of  what  may 
be,  of  that  full  return  of  heart  and  soul  and 
[112] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

mind  to  himself,  to  which  our  Lord  calls  us. 
Think  of  those  blessed  privileges  of  his 
House  to  which  we  are  so  indifferent,  of  His 
merciful  promise  of  welcome  and  forgiveness, 
if  we  come  pleading  our  unworthiness  and 
His  all-sufficient  Sacrifice. 

'  In  my  hand  no  price  I  bring, 
Simply  to  Thy  Cross  I  cling.'  " 

It  was  inevitable  that  Dr.  Coit  should 
make  much  of  The  Lord's  Day;  the  Sunday 
was  to  him  what  it  was  to  Henry  Vaughan: 
"Heaven  once  a  week."  He  loved  hymns 
like  "O  Quanta  Qualia," 

"O  what  the  joy  and  the  glory  must  be, 
Those  endless  Sabbaths  the  blessed  ones  see! " 

and  the  quaint  lines  of  Herbert  and  Vaughan 
were  often  on  his  lips.  He  loved  such  verses 
as  the  following,  not  only  for  their  piety,  but 
for  their  poetry: 

SUNDAY 

O  DAY  most  calm,  most  bright! 
The  fruit  of  this,  the  next  world's  bud, 
The  indorsement  of  supreme  delight, 
Writ  by  a  Friend,  and  with  His  blood; 
The  couch  of  time;  care's  balm  and  bay; 
The  week  were  dark,  but  for  thy  light: 

Thy  torch  doth  show  the  way. 

[113] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

The  Sundays  of  man's  life, 
Threaded  together  on  time's  string, 
Make  bracelets  to  adorn  the  wife 
Of  the  eternal  glorious  King. 
On  Sunday  heaven's  gate  stands  ope; 
Blessings  are  plentiful  and  rife, 

More  plentiful  than  hope. 

This  day  my  Saviour  rose, 
And  did  enclose  this  light  for  His: 
That,  as  each  beast  his  manger  knows, 
Man  might  not  of  his  fodder  miss. 
Christ  hath  took  in  this  piece  of  ground, 
And  made  a  garden  there  for  those 

Who  want  herbs  for  their  wound. 

GEORGE  HERBERT 

SON-DAYES 

BRIGHT  shadows  of  true  rest!  some  shoots  of  blisse; 

Heaven  once  a  week; 
The  next  world's  gladnesse  prepossest  in  this; 

A  day  to  seek 

Eternity  in  time;  the  steps  by  which 
We  climb  above  all  ages;  lamps  that  light 
Man  through  his  heap  of  dark  days;  and  the  rich     . 
And  full  redemption  of  the  whole  week's  flight! 

HENRY  VAUGHAN 

The  spiritual  atmosphere  of  these  verses  is 
certainly  not  very  common  to-day,  nor  has  it 
ever  been  possible  to  make  such  an  atmos- 
phere a  medium  in  which  any  large  com- 
munity of  boys  can  breathe  naturally  and 

[114] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

normally.  Moreover,  Dr.  Coit  was  no  Sab- 
batarian; his  preferred  Sunday  was  some- 
thing between  the  Puritan  Sabbath  and  the 
Continental  Sunday.  Happiness  for  his  boys 
he  unquestionably  aimed  at,  but  he  insisted 
that  the  first  day  of  the  week  should  be  set 
apart  and  devoted  to  things  that  concern 
the  final  end  of  man.  There  was  to  be  no 
secular  work,  and,  alas!  no  games  or  sport. 
No  boy  could  don  his  sweater  or  duck- 
trowsers;  Sunday-clothes  were  to  be  worn 
throughout  the  day  and  a  seemly  hat.  The 
general  tone  of  the  school  was  to  be  one  of 
peace  and  quiet.  Musical  instruments  were 
taboo,  and  a  phonograph  would  have  been  a 
painful  intrusion.  Apparently  such  rules  and 
traditions  prevail  to-day  in  the  great  English 
public  schools,  but  with  us  in  America  some 
modification  of  Puritan  propriety  was  bound 
to  come.  Our  ideals  are  not  favorable  to  the 
strain  of  ultra-decorum,  and  it  may  be  said 
in  general  that  the  American  boy  has  a  fine 
democratic  indifference  to  a  certain  sense  of 
form  that  is  characteristic  of  his  English 

C 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

cousin.  Too  much  neatness  in  attire  is  a 
manifest  bore,  and  a  little  excessive  heat  or 
bodily  languor  suggests  a  prompt  recourse  to 
tropical  fashions  in  dress.  He  would  have  a 
lofty  scorn  for  such  a  policy  as  is  indicated 
by  the  following  notice  taken  from  a  London 
paper  of  July,  1914: 

HARROW  AND  THE  HEAT 

RELAXATION  OF  THE  DRESS  RULES  FORBIDDEN 

No  relaxation  of  the  sumptuary  laws  of  Harrow  School  is  being 
allowed  by  the  authorities,  the  hot  weather  not  being  held  to  be  an 
excuse.  Apparently  some  would-be  pioneers  have  attempted 
dress  reform,  for  the  following  announcement  has  been  issued:  — 

"The  school  are  reminded  that  the  rules  relating  to  school 
dress  must  be  strictly  observed. 

"On  all  occasions  when  the  black  tail  coat  or  jacket  is  worn,  a 
stiff  collar  must  also  be  worn. 

"The  flannel  shirt  must  be  worn  buttoned  to  the  top  by  all 
boys  passing  through  the  streets  when  changed  for  games." 

But  difficulties  and  reactions  are  not  argu- 
ments in  themselves,  and  a  sober  Sunday 
was  a  part  of  Dr.  Coit's  conception  of  Chris- 
tian discipline  in  a  Church  school.  Doubt- 
less the  impressions  of  Alumni  will  differ 
greatly  in  regard  to  the  old  Sunday  observ- 
ance at  St.  Paul's.  Choir-boys,  of  whom 

[116] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

there  have  been  nearly  a  thousand,  were  so 
occupied  and  usually  so  much  interested  in 
the  musical  parts  of  the  chapel  service  that 
Sunday  for  them  probably  passed  happily 
and  quickly.  But  the  average  boy,  with  his 
constitutional  repugnance  to  inaction  and 
dulness,  could  not  be  expected  to  find  an 
appeal  in  the  notion  of  "endless  sabbaths." 
Dr.  Coit,  however,  waived  the  question  of 
appeal.  He  stressed  the  doing  of  certain 
things  from  a  sense  of  duty  alone,  and  did 
not  force  the  thesis  that  enjoyment  is  a 
necessary  element  in  really  edifying  worship. 
If  the  sermon  were  dull,  then  "God  takes  a 
text  and  preach eth  patience."  The  boys 
were  invited  to  consider  it  a  valuable  bit  of 
training  to  learn  to  sit  still,  and  for  one  day 
in  the  week  to  rest  both  body  and  mind. 
And  so,  Dr.  Coit  claimed  that,  apart  from 
the  purely  religious  function  of  Sunday,  a 
strict  observance  of  the  day  sent  each  boy 
back  to  the  routine  of  Monday's  work  with 
a  certain  freshness  of  attack,  as  if  from  a 
secular  holiday;  for  twenty-four  hours,  at 

[117] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

least,  his  mind  had  lain  fallow.  This  was 
the  more  true  from  the  fact  that  no  news- 
paper was  opened  on  Sunday,  and  the  range 
of  reading  was  limited  to  a  prescribed  collec- 
tion of  books  called  the  Sunday  Library. 
And  yet  the  day  was  not  gloomy,  except  to 
those  who  were  determined  to  find  it  so. 
Every  Sunday  in  the  year  was  a  feast-day, 
and  even  Lent  did  not  involve  an  exception 
for  those  boys  who  tried  to  pass  it  faithfully. 
Sundays  in  Lent  were  brightened  and  some- 
what glorified  for  a  few  of  the  boys,  because, 
having  fasted  a  little  on  the  week-days  (and 
Dr.  Coit  did  not  dilute  "fasting"  into  mere 
self-denial),  they  felt  that  they  could  feast 
on  Sundays.  It  will  readily  be  inferred  that 
the  Lord's  Day,  though  not  devoted  to  toil, 
was  a  fairly  active  day  for  the  whole  school, 
with  its  prescriptions  and  options  extending 
from  an  "Early  Celebration"  in  Chapel  be- 
fore breakfast  to  the  formal  "Good  Night" 
at  8.30  p.  m.  in  the  School  Room  along 
with  the  hymn,  "Now  the  day  is  past  and 
gone." 
[118] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

But  busy  as  Dr.  Coit  was  with  his  respon- 
sible charge,  he  made  Sunday  a  special  time 
for  looking  after  the  people  of  the  neighbor- 
hood. In  the  first  years  of  St.  Paul's,  the 
farmers  and  residents  of  the  vicinity  at- 
tended Chapel  along  with  the  scholars. 
Later,  with  the  growth  of  the  school,  it  was 
necessary  to  provide  special  services.  After 
the  completion  of  the  new  chapel  in  1888, 
the  old  chapel  was  practically  handed  over 
to  the  local  congregation.  The  body  of 
worshippers,  though  not  large,  was  devoted 
to  the  Rector;  many  of  our  neighbors  were 
his  close  friends.  He  baptized  many  and 
buried  many.  Few  functions,  whether  fes- 
tal, ferial  or  funeral  could  dispense  with  his 
ministrations,  and  his  memory  to-day  is 
cherished  up  and  down  the  country-side. 
Though  he  rarely  walked  for  exercise,  his 
tall  form  striding  along  the  country  roads, 
or  in  his  old  buggy  with  Mrs.  Coit,  when  he 
was  engaged  in  some  errand  of  cheer  or  ease- 
ment, was  a  picture  very  familiar  to  boys  on 
their  afternoon  tramps. 

[119] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

This  extra-clerical  work  Dr.  Coit  regarded 
as  a  part  of  his  ministry,  and  its  influence 
will  be  long  felt  in  the  environs  of  Concord. 
With  the  city  itself  he  was  not  very  closely 
identified,  though  his  relations  with  life-long 
friends  of  the  school  were  very  cordial,  and 
his  personal  attachment  to  Bishop  Niles  and 
the  clergy  of  Concord  was  deep  and  sincere. 
And  so  his  personality  was  not  without  wit- 
ness in  the  capital  city  and  throughout  the 
state  of  New  Hampshire;  and,  in  a  very 
true  sense,  it  abides  there  to-day  in  the 
small  body  of  spiritually-minded  priests  of 
the  church,  who,  with  Bishop  Parker  at  their 
head,  are  conscious  that  they  drew  much  of 
their  best  inspiration  as  former  St.  Paul's 
boys  from  the  First  Rector. 

In  a  school  of  a  thousand  boys,  like  Eton, 
the  religious  and  moral  influence  of  the  Head 
Master  must  necessarily  emanate  from  the 
pulpit;  he  can  come  into  personal  relations 
with  but  few  of  his  charge.  St.  Paul's  has 
not,  as  yet,  coveted  a  roster  of  pupils  beyond 
the  supervision  and  personal  knowledge  of  a 

[120] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

single  man.  Dr.  Coit  never  admitted  that 
three  hundred  boys  were  more  than  he  could 
account  for.  Even  after  the  time  when  years 
and  sorrow  began  to  tell  upon  his  powers,  his 
zeal  for  the  welfare  of  each  boy  did  not  abate, 
and  it  is  safe  to  say  that  no  boy  quite  es- 
caped his  loving  scrutiny  up  to  the  end  of 
his  mission.  And  nothing  claimed  more  im- 
periously his  energetic  interest  than  each 
boy's  attitude  towards  what  he  considered 
the  greatest  thing  in  the  world.  And  so, 
the  Doctor  must  know,  as  each  boy  arrived 
at  a  responsible  age,  how  he  stood  in  regard 
to  the  Christian  religion.  The  Confirma- 
tion class  of  each  year  was  an  obvious  chal- 
lenge to  the  Christian  choice,  and  it  lay  very 
close  to  the  Rector's  heart.  There  was,  we 
think,  no  compulsion  of  any  sort,  and, 
naturally,  some  boys  never  yielded  to  the 
gentle  moral  pressure  that  led  the  majority 
to  take  upon  themselves  the  vows  of  Con- 
firmation. We  doubt  whether  any  one  ever 
really  regretted  the  step,  even  though  a  few 
may  have  ostentatiously,  under  stress,  attrib- 

C 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS   COIT 

uted  their  subsequent  lapses  to  the  reactions 
of  early  over-stimulation  of  their  moral  na- 
ture. Of  prigs  there  were  very  few.  Dr. 
Coit  was  too  wise  and  too  manly  to  be  satis- 
fied or  deceived  by  any  exterior  manifesta- 
tion of  simulated  piety.  Thorough  in  his 
training,  penetrating  in  his  intuitions,  he 
prepared  each  boy,  as  if  he  were  the  only 
boy,  and  made  him  feel  that  the  choice  he 
was  making  was  the  most  momentous  step 
of  his  life.  Perhaps  in  some  cases,  it  was 
the  best  moment  of  life.  There  was  a 
strange  and  isolating  atmosphere  that  hung 
over  the  few  days  preceding  the  Ascension 
Day  on  which  a  boy  was  confirmed.  No 
one  talked  about  his  approaching  confirma- 
tion, and  very  few  of  the  school  at  large 
were  aware,  previous  to  the  public  ceremony, 
of  the  identity  of  the  candidates.  And  when 
it  was  all  over,  life  seemed  to  begin  afresh. 

However,  Dr.  Coit  was  no  sentimentalist, 
and  he  realized  only  too  keenly  that  Con- 
firmation was  but  a  beginning,  and  that  the 
future  of  his  boys  was  an  untravelled  country 

[  122] 


FACSIMILE     OF     INSCRIPTION 

Written  by  Dr.  Coit 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

as  full  of  disillusions  and  surprises  as  that 
traversed  by  the  pilgrim  of  John  Bunyan. 
He  never  seemed  to  be  complaisant  over  the 
large  number  of  communicants  that  St.  Paul's 
has  added  to  the  Church,  a  number  greatly 
augmented  in  the  twenty  years  since  his 
death.  He  must  have  been  conscious  that 
he  was  the  instrument,  but  he  was  not  given 
to  dwelling  on  the  satisfactions  of  his  re- 
sponsible office.  With  some  hesitation  we 
have  had  reproduced  here  a  typical  inscrip- 
tion, taken  from  the  fly-leaf  of  the  Greek 
Testament  which  he  gave  to  a  member  of 
his  Confirmation  class.  The  book  in  ques- 
tion came  into  possession  of  the  writer  on 
the  death  of  Mr.  Swift,  and  he  is  sure  that 
old  boys  will  be  glad  to  refresh  their  mem- 
ories with  the  sight  of  the  Doctor's  hand- 
writing, though  of  a  formal  type,  and  at  the 
same  time,  associate  affectionately  the  donor 
with  the  recipient  of  the  Greek  Testament. 
The  most  enduring  impressions  of  Dr. 
Coit's  pastoral  work  gather  chiefly  about  the 
Old  Chapel;  he  ministered  but  seven  years 

[123] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

in  our  present  beautiful  building,  and  his 
preaching  was  perhaps  less  effective  there 
owing  to  the  size  of  the  auditorium  and  the 
limitations  of  his  voice.  But  the  fervor  and 
content  of  his  work  were  no-wise  different. 
There  was  a  little  more  ceremonial;  the 
choir  was  vested,  and  the  various  offices 
were  a  little  more  stately.  He  never  really 
laid  stress  on  "functions,"  and  we  fancy  that 
he  always  felt  a  little  uncomfortable  in  pro- 
cessions. And,  yet,  an  impressively  ordered 
service  was  the  rule  in  the  chapel  of  his  day. 
It  was  one  of  his  convictions  that  the  quiet, 
habitual  performance  of  a  religious  duty, 
under  forms  that  become  familiar,  is  the 
true  way  to  create  habits  that  will  endure, 
though  he  was  no  slave  to  routine,  and  al- 
ways gladly  availed  himself  of  the  aid  of 
outside  preachers  who  had  the  prophetic 
gift.  Many  such  can  be  recalled.  He  dis- 
trusted the  sensational;  and  the  idea  of  the 
Christian  Religion  adapted  to  modern  re- 
quirements had  small  meaning  for  him. 
And  his  taste  was  correspondingly  severe. 
[124] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

That  his  instincts  and  ideals  in  these  matters 
were  valid  would  seem  to  be  indicated  by 
the  fact  that  his  ways  have  proved  accept- 
able, and  an  alumnus  returning  to  the  school 
to-day  finds  himself  at  home  in  the  Chapel 
as  perhaps  nowhere  else.  He  hears  the 
same  prayers  and  hymns,  and  is  conscious 
of  the  same  spirit  of  reverent  devotion.  No 
old  boy  of  any  judgment  is  looking  for 
progress,  so-called,  in  the  simple  matters  of 
religion,  and  so  he  is  always  comforted  to 
find  that  we  still  sing  on  Saturday  night  the 
time-honored  "My  days  unclouded,  as  they 
pass,"  and  at  the  end  of  each  term,  "Saviour, 
source  of  every  blessing."  These  words  are 
part  of  the  St.  Paul's  legend,  though  the  for- 
mer hymn  encountered  in  its  early  days  one 
change  of  tune.  Tunes,  after  all,  are  the 
winsome  powers  that  make  boys  sing,  and 
the  best  of  words  cannot  long  bear  up  under 
the  load  of  a  dull  or  difficult  setting.  We 
Americans  have  tried  pathetically  to  sing  the 
Star  Spangled  Banner,  but,  owing  to  the  ex- 
cessive range  of  the  music,  its  rendering,  on 

[125] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

sea  and  on  land,  notwithstanding  a  swelling 
patriotism,  has  never  been  anything  but 
lame,  and  often  to  our  great,  if  amused, 
humiliation. 

But,  if  Dr.  Coit  aimed  at  adhering  to  a 
dignified  and  protective  ritual,  he  had  no 
thought  of  standardizing  the  type  of  the 
youthful  worshipper.  Each  one  must  be 
won  and  directed  according  to  his  endow- 
ment. Accordingly,  not  being  omniscient, 
he  had  to  take  the  risk  of  failure,  and  some 
of  his  boys  have  not  turned  out  well.  But 
he  did  not  altogether  let  go  his  grip,  and 
his  letters  pursued  them  affectionately.  His 
boys  certainly  will  bear  no  malice  for  this, 
and  many  of  them  have  returned  to  their 
Christian  allegiance. 

The  new  Chapel,  with  its  twenty-seven 
years  of  what  for  this  country  means  antiq- 
uity, is,  as  far  as  material  things  go,  the 
historic  monument  of  the  first  Rector.  His 
marble  effigy  lies  there,  though  his  body 
rests  on  the  hill  in  the  school  cemetery  along 
with  his  brother,  Joseph  Rowland  Coit,  and 

[126] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

John  Hargate.  It  had  long  been  his  dream 
to  see  realized  the  plans  for  a  really  noble 
building  of  satisfying  beauty,  that  should 
house  the  entire  body  of  boys  and  lend 
itself  sympathetically  and  appropriately  to 
the  forms  of  worship  which  he  loved.  And 
this  dream  was  more  than  fulfilled,  when 
boys  and  alumni  took  up  the  project  and 
enthusiastically  carried  it  to  a  successful 
conclusion  from  sheer  devotion  to  the  man 
that  had  made  their  school.  No  tablet  on  its 
walls  records  that  the  chapel  was  erected  in 
his  honor,  but  the  names  on  the  memorials, 
the  scenes  and  inscriptions  looking  down 
from  the  windows,  the  grave  faces  in  niche 
and  on  pedestal,  are  a  cloud  of  witnesses  to 
the  fact  that  those  who  builded  and  those 
who  are  built  into  the  structure  compose,  as 
it  were,  the  spiritual  coterie  of  the  first 
Rector.  They  belong  to  his  tenancy,  and 
they  close  an  epoch. 

And  time,  the  final  arbiter  of  reputations, 
is  giving  Henry  Coit  his  assured  place  among 
Educators.  Some  divided  voices  may  be 

[127] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

heard,  but  they  do  not  count;  what  a  man 
really  is  can  scarcely  be  other  than  the 
haunting  verdict  passed  on  him  by  the  ma- 
jority of  those  that  know.  As  in  the  son- 
net that  precedes  this  article  and  serves  as 
its  text,  he  belongs  to  the  class  of  "quiet 
ministers,"  of  "laborers  that  shall  not  fail 
when  man  is  gone."  Even  his  type  is  rare, — 
apart  from  his  individuality.  There  are  many 
classes  and  many  temperaments  in  the  great 
vocation  of  the  school-master,  and  there  is 
room  for  them,  though  the  risks  of  failure 
are  so  obvious  that  one  wonders  often  at  the 
attraction  which  it  exercises  over  the  young 
and  ambitious.  What  is  the  subtle  spell 
that  drives  a  man  into  the  teaching  profes- 
sion, that  invites  him  to  pass  his  days  among 
the  eternally  immature,  to  forego  the  honors 
and  emoluments  of  life,  and  to  accept  cheer- 
fully a  social  status  in  the  world  which,  if 
not  secondary,  is,  at  least,  ambiguous?  With- 
out attempting  to  answer  this  general  ques- 
tion, we  may  say  that  the  case  was  very 
simple  with  Dr.  Coit.  He  was  early  drawn 
[128] 


HENRY  AUGUSTUS  COIT 

to  the  Christian  ministry;  his  lot  fell  among 
boys;  and  he  devoted  himself  to  his  task  as 
being  the  first  duty  at  hand.  Putting  duty 
and  sacrifice  first,  without  worldly  ambition, 
without  whims  or  hobbies,  little  affected  with 
the  fever  of  diversion,  he  got  his  happiness 
out  of  his  work  and  his  boys;  and  it  was  a 
life  of  work  from  first  to  last.  We  are  con- 
fident that  a  just  compensation  rewards  him 
now,  and  that  his  great  pedagogic  heart  finds 
its  rest  in  the  satisfying  presence  of  the 
Supreme  Head  Master  of  all  men. 


[129] 


APPENDIX 


notice  of  Dr.  Coit,  which  appeared  in 
-••  the  Horae  Scholasticae,  March  8,  1895,  is  ap- 
pended, not  as  a  part  of  the  Appreciation, 
but  rather  for  the  purpose  of  adding  a  little 
warmth  to  the  colder  generalizations  of  twenty 
years  later.  The  First  Rector  is  now  but  a 
name  to  a  large  number  of  the  Alumni  of 
St.  Paul's  School,  and  yet  as  the  virtual 
creator  of  what  is  best  in  their  Alma  Mater, 
he  will  always  claim  an  interest,  and  no  true 
details  of  his  life  and  death  will  be  consid- 
ered irrelevant. 


THE   RECTOR 

THE  event  in  the  history  of  St.  Paul's  School, 
so  long  foreseen,  so  keenly  apprehended,  has 
occurred:  our  Rector,  in  God's  own  time,  has 
been  taken  from  us.  There  will  come  a  day  when 
we  shall  look  back  and  say  that  all  was  right, 
that  the  end  was  glorious;  that,  spared  a  sever- 
ance from  his  charge  by  long  illness  or  gradual 
decay  of  powers,  he  died  fittingly,  his  work  done, 
the  final  impress  given,  his  aspirations  measurably 
fulfilled;  but  to  us  now  the  sense  of  loss  is  over- 
whelming; to  us  now  Dr.  Coit  seems  to  have  died 
ten  years  too  soon. 

The  alumni  will  be  eager  to  learn  something  of 
the  details  of  the  sad  scenes  through  which  we 
have  been  passing,  and  the  writer  has  been  asked 
to  contribute  this  notice  to  the  "Horse."  It  is 
reassuring  to  him  to  feel  that  to  write  of  Dr. 
Coit  to  them  is  like  writing  a  letter  to  personal 
friends;  their  absorbing  interest  is  as  his  own, 
their  grief  qualified  only  by  the  tempering  effects 
which  time  and  separation  bring.  The  world  at 
large  will  never  quite  comprehend  our  feelings 
toward  the  man  who  has  just  passed  away,  how  he 

[133] 


APPENDIX 

was  to  most  St.  Paul's  boys  their  hero,  their  ideal 
of  what  is  best  worth  striving  to  be;  and  this 
article,  therefore,  is  written  mainly  for  those  who 
knew  and  loved  its  subject,  and  who  will  see  no 
exaggeration  in  the  warm  appreciations  of  an 
alumnus  who  may  claim  an  intimate  knowledge 
of  that  about  which  he  speaks.  Fortunately,  the 
four  weeks  which  have  elapsed  since  the  sad 
events  will  afford  some  perspective,  however 
slight,  and  will  enable  him  to.  write  more  soberly 
than  would  have  been  possible  earlier. 


When  the  school  reopened  after  the  Christmas 
holidays,  the  Rector  seemed  to  be  in  his  usual 
health.  It  is  true  he  had  taken  no  rest.  While 
others  were  off  on  their  vacation,  getting  the 
much-needed  change  and  recreation,  he  still  re- 
mained at  work,  engaged  in  writing  letters  to 
parents  and  attending  to  the  multitude  of  school 
details  incidental  to  the  closing  of  one  term  and 
the  beginning  of  another.  It  is  said  that  he  wrote 
five  hundred  letters  during  the  short  three  weeks. 
But  his  work  for  the  school  was  by  no  means  his 
only  occupation.  The  vacation  was  his  great  op- 
portunity for  looking  after  the  affairs  of  the  neigh- 
borhood, and  this  Christmas,  as  usual,  he  spent 

[134] 


APPENDIX 

himself  lavishly  in  behalf  of  the  country  people 
who  attended  the  Old  Chapel,  and  of  all  who  in 
any  capacity  were  connected  with  the  school  and 
remained  there  during  the  holidays.  He  preached 
on  the  Sundays,  and  at  a  special  service  the  last 
night  of  the  year,  when  we  are  told  that  his  ser- 
mon was  sad  and  depressing,  treating  of  death  as 
though  foreboding  it.  But  notwithstanding  this 
poor  preparation  for  the  cares  and  labors  of  our 
hardest  term,  he  was  bright  and  cheerful  when  we 
came  together,  and  no  one  had  a  misgiving  as  to 
what  was  in  store. 

The  boys  returned  to  work  on  Wednesday,  Jan- 
uary 9.  The  Rector  attended  to  all  his  duties 
until  the  week  begining  January  20.  On  that 
day  he  preached  for  the  last  time  in  chapel. 
During  the  ensuing  few  days  he  became  unwell, 
and  remained  at  the  rectory,  though  not  confined 
to  his  bed.  However,  on  St.  Paul's  Day,  January 
25,  he  occupied  his  stall  in  chapel,  and  it  is  a  coin- 
cidence that  the  anniversary  of  our  patron  saint 
should  have  been  the  occasion  of  his  last  public 
appearance  in  the  place  he  loved  so  dearly.  Only 
once  again  did  he  set  foot  within  its  walls,  and 
this  was  at  the  early  celebration  of  the  Holy 
Communion,  upon  the  following  Sunday,  January 
27,  when  he  occupied  a  seat  in  the  choir.  But 
this  effort  was  too  much  for  him,  and,  after  com- 

[135] 


APPENDIX 

municating,  he  was  obliged  to  withdraw,  making 
his  way  all  alone  to  the  vestry,  where  he  was 
presently  found  in  a  fainting  condition.  On  Mon- 
day he  revived  somewhat,  and  insisted  on  going 
over  to  his  study  in  the  schoolhouse  for  a  few 
hours,  but  he  was  worse  at  night,  and  it  was 
becoming  evident  that  Dr.  Coit  was  a  very  sick 
man.  He  never  left  his  bed  after  that  night, 
and,  as  the  week  went  on,  all  the  symptoms  be- 
came more  unfavorable.  His  disease,  a  form  of 
influenza,  developed  into  pneumonia,  and  was 
pronounced  such  by  Dr.  George  B.  Shattuck,  son 
of  the  founder,  on  Saturday,  February  2.  His 
enfeebled  constitution  could  make  but  little  resist- 
ance to  the  deadliness  of  the  attack,  and  in  three 
days  all  was  over.  The  end  came  in  the  early 
morning  of  Tuesday,  February  5,  at  half  past 
three  o'clock. 

The  morning  of  February  5,  1895,  will  never 
be  forgotten  by  any  one  who  was  a  member  of 
the  community  of  St.  Paul's  School  on  that 
day.  The  blow  fell  like  lightning  out  of  a  clear 
sky.  The  short  week's  illness  had  prepared  no 
one  for  the  catastrophe.  The  boys,  especially, 
had  not  realized  in  the  least  that  their  revered 
master  was  in  danger  of  death;  so  that  when  it 
was  whispered  about  in  the  various  houses  at 
breakfast  time  that  the  Rector  was  dead,  they 

[136] 


APPENDIX 

were  terribly  shocked.  They  could  not  believe 
it.  As  they  filed  into  the  dining-room  of  the 
school,  there  was  dead  silence  instead  of  the 
usual  murmur  of  voices.  Who  will  forget  the 
Morning-Chapel  that  followed:  the  depressed  air 
of  the  boys;  the  look  of  mingled  grief  and  con- 
sternation on  the  faces  of  the  masters;  the  hymn, 
"Jesus,  Lover  of  My  Soul,"  not  strong- voiced  as 
is  wont,  but  feeble  and  timeless;  the  prayer  for 
a  community  in  affliction;  the  vacant  stall;  the 
extreme  solemnity  of  the  exit?  Then  came  the 
formal  announcement  by  the  Vice-Rector  in  the 
big  school-room. 

As  the  days  wore  on  towards  the  funeral,  the 
excitement  was  less,  but  the  appreciation  of  what 
had  happened  was  more  marked.  A  mass-meeting 
was  held  by  the  boys  in  the  auditorium,  over 
which  Mr.  Parker  was  asked  to  preside.  Speeches 
were  made,  and  the  resolutions  which  are  pub- 
lished elsewhere  in  this  number  of  tfie  "Horse" 
were  passed.  Great  feeling  was  manifested,  and, 
indeed,  it  may  be  said  that  throughout  this  trying 
ordeal  the  record  of  the  boys,  on  the  whole,  has 
been  what  one  would  wish  and  what  one  would 
expect;  they  have  stood  their  test  well. 

The  funeral  took  place  on  Friday,  February  8. 
The  demonstration  of  feeling  from  the  outside 
world  was  so  great,  as  evidenced  by  the  great 

[137] 


APPENDIX 

number  of  telegrams  and  letters,  that  careful 
arrangements  had  to  be  made  to  receive  a  large 
gathering  of  mourners.  There  were  one  hundred 
and  ten  of  the  alumni  present,  including  the  resi- 
dents,—  a  remarkable  number  when  one  considers 
that  the  greatest  storm  of  the  winter  was  raging. 
A  full  account  of  this  most  impressive  event  is 
given  elsewhere.  Owing  to  the  storm,  very  few 
of  the  boys  were  allowed  to  go  to  the  cemetery, 
but  many  of  the  alumni  followed  the  carriages 
through  the  deep  snow  on  the  Hopkinton  road, 
to  be  present  at  the  last  rites.  The  scene  at  the 
grave  was  extraordinary.  The  school  burial-place 
lies  on  an  eminence,  and  the  rising  ground  afforded 
no  shelter  against  the  elements,  which  were  in  a 
tumult.  The  wind  blew  fiercely,  the  snow  was 
drifting  heavily;  it  was  a  sort  of  riot  like  a  storm 
at  sea.  But  there  was  something  magnificent  in 
the  ruggedness  of  it  all,  not  altogether  alien  to  the 
great  soul  that  had  battled  unceasingly  for  the 
good  while  on  the  earth,  and  then,  when  sum- 
moned, had  austerely  left  it  without  regret  and 
without  a  word.  Surely,  this  was  to  be  no  com- 
mon burial.  It  seemed  as  though  Nature  were 
herself  taking  part  in  so  notable  a  funeral. 

But  the  summer  will  come,  with  the  green  grass 
and  the  leaves  and  flowers,  and  then  it  will  be 
seen  that  the  spot  where  the  Rector  has  been,  laid 

[138] 


APPENDIX 

to  rest  is  beautiful,  and  in  every  respect  appro- 
priate. It  overlooks  the  school,  and  commands  a 
lovely  prospect  of  the  chapel  tower,  which,  so  re- 
cently built  and  dedicated  to  the  memory  of  his 
wife,  had  long  been  the  object  of  his  heart's  de- 
sire. That  plot  of  ground,  already  hallowed  by 
tender  memories  to  many  at  St.  Paul's  has  now 
become  a  sacred  place,  the  shrine  of  St.  Paul's 
pilgrims,  whither,  for  years  to  come,  the  old  boys 
will  find  their  way,  to  gaze  on  the  spot  where 
"the  Doctor"  lies. 

II 

When  a  memoir  or  life  of  Dr.  Coit  shall  be 
written,  there  will  be  much  material  connected 
with  his  early  life  that  will  be  of  great  interest  as 
showing  the  circumstances  and  influence  which 
were  instrumental  in  developing  his  character. 
Aside  from  the  discipline  of  a  pious  and  refined 
home,  and  aside:  from » the  stimulating  effect  of  life 
at  College  Point  under  the  devout  and  imagi- 
native Muhlenberg,  there  were  public  events 
occurring  in  his  youth  which  must  have  pro- 
foundly stirred  him.  He  was  but  twelve  years 
of  age  when  Arnold  died  at  Rugby,  and  fifteen  at 
the  time  of  the  secession  of  Newman  and  the 
culmination  of  the  Oxford  movement.  These 
events,  with  all  that  they  implied  and  the  litera- 

[139] 


APPENDIX 

ture  which  they  evoked,  —  The  Christian  Year, 
Stanley's  Life,  the  Oxford  Tracts,  Pusey's  Ser- 
mons,—  must  have  been  among  his  earliest  im- 
pressions, and  their  influence  may  be  easily  traced 
through  the  succeeding  years.  But  there  is  no 
opportunity  now  to  enter  upon  this  part  of  the 
subject;  it  will  be  sufficient  to  give  the  main 
facts  of  the  Rector's  life  prior  to  the  St.  Paul's 
School  period. 

Dr.  Henry  Augustus  Coit  was  born  January  20, 
1830,  at  Wilmington,  Del.,  where  his  father,  the 
late  Rev.  Joseph  Rowland  Coit,  D.D.,  was  rector 
of  St.  Andrew's  Church.  In  1832  his  family 
went  to  Plattsburgh,  N.  Y.,  his  father  having 
been  elected  rector  of  Trinity  Church  in  that 
city.  There  his  youth  was  passed  until  his  fif- 
teenth year,  when  he  was  sent  to  the  well-known 
boarding-school  at  College  Point,  Flushing,  L.  I., 
under  Dr.  Muhlenberg.  In  due  course  he  went 
to  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  but,  his  health 
giving  out,  he  spent  a  winter  in  the  South, 
chiefly  in  Georgia.  On  his  return,  he  accepted 
the  position  of  assistant  professor  of  the  ancient 
languages  at  St.  James's  College,  Maryland.  He 
remained  there  about  two  years,  and  then,  in  1851, 
assumed  charge  of  a  large  parish  school  under  the 
direction  of  Dr.,  afterwards  Bishop,  Bowman  at 
Lancaster,  Pa.  There  he  met  Miss  Mary  Bowman 

[140] 


APPENDIX 

Wheeler,  to  whom  he  was  subsequently  married. 
While  at  Lancaster,  he  was  ordained  Deacon  by 
Bishop  Alonzo  Potter,  the  ceremony  taking  place 
at  St.  James's  Church,  Philadelphia.  His  ordina- 
tion to  the  priesthood  followed  one  year  later,  in 
1854,  in  Plattsburgh,  Bishop  Horatio  Potter  offici- 
ating. He  was  at  this  time  serving  efficiently  as 
missionary  at  Ellenburgh  and  Centreville,  Clinton 
County,  N.  Y.,  having  recently  left  his  charge  at 
Lancaster.  Here  he  remained  until,  having  been 
invited  by  the  Trustees  of  St.  Paul's  School  to 
become  its  Rector,  he  came  to  Concord,  April  3, 
1856.  His  marriage  had  taken  place  one  week 
earlier,  March  27,  in  the  Church  of  the  Epiphany 
at  Philadelphia. 

in 

No  attempt  will  be  made  here  to  present  an 
orderly  or  complete  account  of  Dr.  Coit's  work 
and  character,  or  to  estimate  his  place  in  Church 
and  country.  One  feels  that  in  this  school  paper 
a  due  reticence  must  be  observed  in  regard  to  one 
"to  whom  all  personal  praise  was  at  once  pain 
and  punishment."  But  we  shall  endeavor  to 
recall  to  the  minds  of  the  alumni  those  traits  and 
qualities  which  made  him  a  power. 

One  of  the  most  striking  things  in  the  multi- 
tude of  letters  which  have  reached  the  school  is 

[141] 


APPENDIX 

the  sense  of  personal  loss  that  they  indicate. 
Although  the  great  loss  to  the  school  is  fully 
understood,  it  is  the  personal  note  that  prevails. 
Every  one  feels  that  he  has  lost  a  friend,  that  a 
great  influence  for  good  has  been  withdrawn  from 
his  life.  "He  was  the  one  man,"  writes  one  of 
the  most  eminent  of  the  alumni,  "who  had  most 
influenced  me  in  life."  Says  another,  "I  rever- 
enced him  more  than  any  man  I  ever  knew." 
No  lapse  of  time,  no  association  with  other  men, 
seemed  to  alter  their  feelings  toward  him.  And 
now  that  he  is  gone,  what  a  flood  of  recollec- 
tions pours  in  upon  the  mind!  How  vividly 
will  be  called  up  the  old  school  days:  the  mani- 
fold ways  in  which  the  Doctor's  influence  was 
brought  to  bear  upon  them;  the  Thursday  night 
lectures,  the  Sunday  evening  hymn;  the  Confir- 
mation class;  the  closing  address  of  the  year, 
always  strong  and  apposite;  the  Doctor's  study, 
the  chapel,  and,  above  all,  the  weekly  sermons 
in  the  Old  Chapel!  His  influence  was  aston- 
ishing. No  boy  ever  escaped  it.  Why  or  how  it 
should  be  so,  there  might  be  difference  of  opinion, 
but  no  one  questioned  the  fact.  If  one  were  dis- 
posed now  to  seek  the  explanation,  several  causes 
suggest  themselves  at  once.  First  of  all,  there 
was  his  enthusiasm  for  goodness:  here  was  a  man 
in  whom  there  was  no  compromise  with  things 
[142] 


APPENDIX 

base  or  low.  Then  there  was  his  big,  loving  heart, 
which  always  went  out  tenderly  to  the  offender, 
no  matter  how  much  it  scorned  the  offence.  Fi- 
nally, there  was  an  inflexibility  and  steadfastness 
of  will,  which,  in  a  world  where  vacillation  is  the 
rule,  not  only  controlled  but  upheld  those  with 
whom  he  came  in  contact.  Back  of  all  these  was 
an  indefinable  something  which  colored  everything 
he  did  or  said,  a  something  which  every  one  recog- 
nized, and  which  gave  the  note  of  distinction  to 
the  most  trivial  acts.  His  determination  to  aim 
at  the  highest  and  never  to  be  pulled  down  to  the 
world's  standards  had  a  bracing  effect  upon  his 
colleagues  as  well  as  upon  the  boys.  To  the  latter 
he  was  a  sort  of  conscience;  they  could  not  face 
him  in  a  question  of  right  and  wrong.  Indeed,  his 
old  boys  never  wholly  rid  themselves  of  this  feel- 
ing, and  it  would  be  quite  true  to  say  that  many 
an  alumnus  has  been  deterred  from  visiting  the 
school  when  his  course  of  life  was  such  that  he 
could  not  safely  brave  an  "interview  with  the 
Doctor." 

If  one  turns  from  his  relations  with  individuals 
to  his  administration  of  the  school  in  general,  his 
marvellous  power  is  equally  apparent.  His  hand- 
ling of  the  great  charge  committed  to  him  might 
fairly  be  called  statesmanship.  No  one  who  has 
never  been  connected  with  a  great  school  can  form 

[143] 


APPENDIX 

any  adequate  conception  of  the  labor,  the  un- 
broken strain,  the  burden  that  devolves  upon  the 
head  master:  he  is  the  responsible  person;  he  is 
the  one  that  can  never  afford  to  neglect  anything 
or  any  one,  or  to  overlook  the  most  insignificant 
of  the  enormous  mass  of  details.  But  Dr.  Coit 
was  equal  to  all  this.  His  patience  and  courage 
seemed  invincible.  Never  in  a  hurry,  always  calm, 
alert  against  every  emergency,  he  spent  himself 
unreservedly  for  those  who  were  confided  to  his 
care.  And  he  was  a  very  wise  man.  He  knew 
how  to  disregard  things  essentially  trivial  and 
unimportant,  and  to  concentrate  his  efforts  upon 
what  was  vital.  In  his  dealings  with  masters 
this  was  most  noticeable.  He  did  not  condescend 
to  petty  interference  with  their  methods,  and 
rarely  indulged  in  personal  criticism;  they  had  full 
scope  to  succeed  or  fail.  If  he  had  to  rebuke,  he 
had  a  unique  power  of  veiling  his  censure  under 
some  broad  generalization,  which,  however,  went 
straight  to  its  mark.  Certainly,  his  method  worked 
well,  and  no  head  of  a  school  ever  had  more  de- 
voted or  loyal  assistants.  They  felt  that  he  really 
cared  for  them,  and  that  the  bond  between  them 
was  not  contingent  upon  success.  The  one  thing 
he  demanded  was  a  faithful  discharge  of  duty,  and 
that,  not  merely  for  the  interests  of  the  school, 
but  on  the  broader  ground  of  principle.  His  sym- 
[144] 


APPENDIX 

pathy  and  great  appreciativeness  called  forth  what 
was  best  in  them.  They  knew  that  their  efforts 
and  sacrifices  for  the  good  of  St.  Paul's  were  noted. 
Indeed,  it  was  a  striking  characteristic  of  this  large 
community  of  men  and  boys  that  no  one  felt  that 
he  was  merged  in  the  crowd,  or  that  he  could 
pursue  his  own  way,  either  for  good  or  evil,  quite 
unobserved. 

The  ethical  quality  in  Dr.  Coit's  equipment  was 
so  strong  and  dominating  that  one  might  be  led, 
especially  at  this  time,  to  overlook  the  intellectual 
side.  But  it  is  obvious  that  no  man  could  have 
been  the  power  that  he  was  without  a  powerful 
understanding.  It  was  the  mind  of  genius,  only 
genius  consecrated.  For  many  years  past  he  had 
done  but  little  teaching,  owing  to  the  stress  of 
other  work,  but  in  the  early  days  of  the  school  he 
always  took  the  higher  classes  in  Latin  and  Greek. 
Who,  that  had  the  privilege  of  reading  Horace  or 
Homer  under  him,  will  ever  forget  those  delight- 
ful and  stimulating  lessons?  He  was  a  perfect 
master  of  terse  and  happy  translation.  We  used 
to  think  that  the  rendering  came  from  his  lips  in 
iambic  pentameters  quite  ready  for  the  press.  He 
knew  the  standard  classics  through  and  through, 
had  absorbed  them,  and  had  that  culture  which 
seems  to  come  from  nothing  else  so  well  as  from 
the  study  of  the  dead  languages,  and  which  is  cer- 

[145] 


APPENDIX 

tainly  its  best  fruit.  This  culture  was  the  founda- 
tion of  a  literary  instinct  that  rarely  failed.  His 
judgments  about  books  and  literature  were  won- 
derfully sound  and  penetrating.  He  hated  trash. 
No  amount  of  public  approbation  could  influence 
his  opinion  about  a  book  which  seemed  to  him 
worthless,  especially  if  it  was  impure  or  irreligious. 
In  fact,  the  merely  intellectual,  when  divorced 
from  the  moral,  had  no  interest  for  him;  for  him 
impure  art  was  always  bad  art,  and  to  read  a 
vicious  book  for  style,  as  people  are  sometimes 
recommended  to  do,  seemed  to  him  absurd  as  well 
as  wrong.  His  own  reading  had  been  wide  and 
deep,  and  furnished  material  to  an  unusual  faculty 
of  illustration.  This  appeared  in  his  sermons  and 
addresses  as  well  as  in  class  work.  The  weekly 
Thursday  night  talk  to  the  boys,  familiarly  known 
as  the  Rector's  Lecture,  was  one  of  the  most  con- 
spicuous examples  of  his  masterly  power  of  deal- 
ing with  the  boys  in  a  body.  There  was  never 
anything  dull  about  it,  but,  whether  the  subject  was 
a  general  school  topic,  or  else  some  special  tendency 
or  abuse  that  needed  correction,  he  brought  to 
bear  all  his  wonderful  discernment  of  boy  character, 
and  pressed  it  home  with  a  force  of  expresssion 
always  persuasive,  often  humorous,  sometimes  with 
a  keen  and  searching  irony  that  was  irresistible. 
Old  boys  will  agree  with  the  writer  that  this 
[146] 


APPENDIX 

Thursday   talk   was    a   very   important   factor  in 
maintaining  the  tone  and  tradition  of  St.  Paul's. 

In  speaking  of  his  sermons,  one  is  on  different 
ground.  That  he  was  a  preacher  of  great  spiritual 
force  could  never  be  doubted  by  those  who  listened 
to  him  Sunday  after  Sunday,  whose  hearts  were 
touched,  and  whose  consciences  were  stimulated 
by  the  words  of  beauty  and  power  that  fell  from 
his  lips.  We  think  he  would  have  been  a  great 
preacher,  even  in  the  world's  opinion,  had  his  lot 
fallen  in  public  places,  with  pastoral  work  his  first 
duty.  As  things  were,  it  seems  marvellous  that  he 
found  time  to  write  sermons  at  all,  when  one 
remembers  his  custom  of  preparing  the  Sunday 
"instruction,"  as  he  would  sometimes  call  it,  on  a 
Saturday  morning  in  his  study,  with  the  door  wide 
open,  amid  constant  interruption  from  boys  or 
masters  on  school  matters. 

Indeed,  he  was  rarely  absent  from  his  Study,  for 
he  felt  that  it  was  the  head  master's  duty  to  be  at 
the  centre  of  his  work  and  accessible  to  his  boys  at 
all  times.  What  wonder  that  forty  years  of  such 
toil,  such  routine,  such  patient  threshing  over  of 
the  same  matter  with  generation  after  generation 
of  strenuous  youth,  should  at  last  wear  him  out! 
Dr.  Coit's  premature  death  was  a  sacrifice  to  as 
high  a  sense  of  duty,  and  to  as  consistent  a  fol- 
lowing of  it,  as  we  have  ever  known. 

[147] 


APPENDIX 

He  will  be  remembered  as  the  great  School- 
master. The  parallel  with  Dr.  Arnold  is  an  obvi- 
ous one,  but  the  two  men  were,  in  most  respects, 
quite  dissimilar.  They  were  alike  in  this:  they 
had  shown,  each  for  his  own  country,  the  possi- 
bility of  herding  large  numbers  of  boys  in 
community  life  without  the  vicious  and  sordid 
accompaniments  that  had  hitherto  been  thought 
necessary  evils,  and  of  inspiring  a  genuine  religious 
tone  to  the  utmost  extent  that  the  undeveloped 
nature  of  the  young  will  admit.  But  Dr.  Coit  was 
an  imitator  of  no  one,  and  it  is  an  error  to  sup- 
pose that  he  modelled  St.  Paul's  School  after  any 
English  type.  His  educational  ideas  were  not 
novel;  we  should  say  that  they  were  substantially 
those  that  were  held  by  most  American  educators 
fifty  years  ago.  Like  all  born  leaders  of  men,  he 
had  strong  convictions;  all  questions  were  not 
open  ones  to  him,  and  among  these  questions  one 
he  regarded  as  settled,  namely,  that  the  study 
of  the  dead  languages  is  the  best  and  only  basis 
of  a  sound  education.  What  was  novel  about 
the  school  he  created  was  the  extraordinary  tone 
and  the  noble  Christian  traditions  which  his  splen- 
did genius  inspired.  Let  no  one  say  that  a  large 
school  cannot  be  kept  comparatively  free  from 
vice  in  all  its  forms,  for  St.  Paul's  men  know  that 
it  has  been  done. 

[148] 


APPENDIX 

From  his  inner  life  we  may  not  venture  to  re- 
move the  veil;  this  side  of  his  character  must  be 
left  untold.  It  was  apparent  to  all  where  lay  the 
true  source  of  his  wonderful  power,  whence  came 
both  the  sweetness  and  the  strength;  he  literally 
went  from  his  knees  to  his  work.  In  the  last  few 
years,  those  who  knew  him  best  felt  that,  though 
the  energy  and  vigor  were  unimpaired,  there  was 
a  growing  detachment  from  the  things  of  this 
world.  His  natural  asceticism  seemed  to  be  inten- 
sified. His  love  for  literature  and  the  classics  was 
waning,  and  a  greater  absorption  than  ever  in  the 
Bible  and  works  of  devotion  was  noticeable.  Even 
his  interest  in  the  New  Chapel,  the  completion  of 
which  had  been  so  gratifying  to  him,  and  the  value 
of  which  as  an  aid  to  true  religion  he  so  fully 
appreciated,  was  that  of  one  whose  mind  was 
dwelling  on  "the  story  of  the  other  side."  Surely 
his  heart  was  half  in  the  other  world.  We  might 
have  fancied  him  lonely  had  we  not  known  who 
his  Companion  was.  And  so  the  end  came;  and, 
as  we  return  to  the  thought  with  which  this  notice 
of  the  Rector  was  begun,  let  us  assure  ourselves 
that  his  death  is  not  really  premature,  but  rather 
the  noble  crown  of  a  noble  work,  which,  coming 
thus  suddenly,  has  thrown  the  flash-light  upon  the 
preciousness  of  the  life  lived.  And  his  memory  is 
no  mere  sentiment,  but  a  mighty  stimulus  to  per- 

[149] 


APPENDIX 

severe,  to  be  patient  and  wise  and  courageous  in 
carrying  on  the  work  which  he  began. 

My  Brethren  of  the  Alumni,  it  rests  with  you, 
as  well  as  with  us  here,  to  see  to  it  that  this  work 
endures. 


THE-PLIMPTON'PRESS 
NORWOOD- MA  SS'U-S -A 


14  DAY  USE 

'RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWEE 

LOAN  DEPT. 

RENEWALS  ONLY — TEL.  NO.  642-3405 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


MAR  2  5  JSSQlff 

«^l 

oprCEIVEr 

.IIJL    5  1    rrn      (• 

Ji  69  0 

rm        RiZTURNED  TO 

LOAM  DEPT 

MAR  3  0  1972 

Lt 

IOAN    AHC 

««v  «•»-- 

n  *  ^,  '"Trt  -APfifl 

:." 

.'      *l           ;f                        ^^ 

M 

AR    2  1Q71  7  ^ 

LD  21A-40m-2,'69 
(J6057slO)476 — A-32 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

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YB  05609 


